Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, announced the release of its first AI model. Musk has confirmed that the chatbot is named Grok, a reference to a 1961 science fiction novel that could mean 'understand intuitively' or 'take something in until it becomes part of you.'

Grok will be first available to a 'select group' in early beta, then to all the Premium+ subscribers of social media platform X. It will be the first product released by Musk's new AI lab, launched in July with the goal of understanding the 'true nature of the universe'. The ultimate purpose of xAI is to build 'good artificial general intelligence (AGI)'-a form of human-like intelligence that has broad capacities for learning, adapting, and solving problems-that is 'maximally curious' and 'truth-seeking'. At xAI, Musk heads up a team of top AI researchers hired from high-profile companies like Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Microsoft, and other major AI labs.

Why does it matter?

The launch comes almost a year after OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT, provoking a wave of generative AI products and a global race for 'large language models'. The billionaire CEO previously voiced concerns about the biased nature of OpenAI's products, a company he co-founded in 2015 and then left in 2018. To address such issues, he has claimed to be working on a 'TruthGPT' to rival Microsoft's Bing AI and Google's Bard. The news was published as SpaceX and Tesla's CEO guest-starred with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the global AI summit, where the two held an open discussion on AI's future potential and risks.