Elon Musk's Grok AI will be available for all X Premium users later this week

Billionaire and xAI owner Elon Musk confirmed on Tuesday that his company's AI chatbot, Grok, will be available to all X premium users later this week. The move comes amid an intensifying rivalry between Musk and his former company OpenAI. Recently, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for straying from the startup's original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity.

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Notably, OpenAI and its flagship offering, ChatGPT, have been in Musk's firing line since the lawsuit, going so far as to call the San Francisco-based startup "closed AI". Recently, Musk's xAI had also decided to join the ranks of Meta and Mistral by open sourcing Grok AI under the Apace 2.0 licence. 

What is Grok and how to use it? 

Musk had launched Grok AI in November last year as an alternative to popular chatbots on the market, including ChatGPT and Gemini (formerly Bard). The chatbot was modelled on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the sci-fi novel by Douglas Admas, and was touted to answer questions with a bit of humour and a "rebellious streak". Until now, Grok has been available through an X Premium+ subscription, which costs users ₹1,300 per month or ₹13,600 per year.

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However, users will now be able to interact with the Grok AI even with an X Premium subscription that is priced at ₹650 per month or ₹6,800 per year. However, Musk hasn't yet confirmed if or when all X users will get to use Grok AI much like they can access ChatGPT version 3.5. 

According to a report by TechCrunch, Musk's decision to offer access to Grok to all premium subscribers could be part of an initiative by the billionaire to improve X's subscriber base amid reports of declining usage. The report, citing data from Sensor Tower, said X usage in the US was down 18% year-on-year in February, while it has fallen 23% since Musk took over the company.

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Moreover, Musk's problems with advertisers have also led to 75 of the top 100 US advertisers on X no longer spending any ad budget on the social media platform.