Grok was first launched on November 4, 2023, and has over the past year undergone significant improvements with the company launching Grok-2 in August 2024.
Previously, Grok was only available to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers, a move that limited access to paying users.
However, in a strategic shift, X has now rolled out Grok for free to all users on its platform. This decision aims to broaden the AI's user base, gather real-time feedback, and refine its capabilities through more extensive interaction.
According to a recent statement, X said the latest version of Grok is faster, sharper, and offers enhanced multilingual support, making it more accessible and effective for users around the world.
The AI chatbot now includes additional features such as web search, citations, and Aurora, X's recently released image generator.
"Since launching Grok-2 in August, we have been hard at work improving Grok on X, adding new features like web search, citations, and our recent image generator, Aurora," the statement read.
"Over the past few weeks we have been quietly testing a new version of the Grok-2 model, which is three times faster and offers improved accuracy, instruction-following, and multilingual capabilities."
This development is part of X's broader push to enhance user experience through artificial intelligence.
Grok, inspired by Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was designed to be playful and capable of handling a wide range of conversational topics, including those deemed 'spicy' or complex.
According to the social media giant, the design also aligns with Musk's advocacy for free speech, allowing Grok to tackle challenging and sensitive subjects with greater openness compared to its competitors.
Despite being free, access to Grok comes with certain limitations to ensure smooth performance and maintain a balanced user experience. Free-tier users can send up to 10 messages every two hours, analyze up to three images per day, and generate no more than three images daily.
Additionally, to access Grok, a user's account must be at least seven days old and linked to a verified phone number.
Premium and Premium+ subscribers, on the other hand, enjoy significantly higher usage limits. Premium users can send up to 50 messages per day and face fewer restrictions on features like image generation and analysis.
With this move, X is aiming to establish Grok as a formidable rival to other leading AI chatbots, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude.
The decision to make Grok free is also a part of X's long-term strategy to integrate AI tools seamlessly into its platform, both on mobile and web. Users can interact with Grok through a dedicated section where they can engage in conversations, analyze content, and generate images using Aurora.
Wycliffe Nyamasege
