Elon Musk’s xAI has taken a significant step by open-sourcing its Grok large language model earlier this March. Following this, Musk announced on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that there will be an expansion in the availability of the Grok chatbot. Starting this week, it will be accessible to more Premium subscribers, extending beyond the previously exclusive Premium+ tier.
This strategic move is seen as an effort to position X competitively against leading chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. It may also signal X’s initiative to boost its subscriber base, especially at a time when the platform is experiencing a downturn in user engagement.
Recent data from Sensor Tower, as reported by NBC News, underscores the challenges X faces. There’s been an 18% decline in U.S. user engagement year-over-year as of February, with a 23% drop since Musk’s acquisition, highlighting the platform’s struggle to maintain its user base.
Musk’s contentious stance towards advertisers might be impacting X’s financial future. Sensor Tower’s analysis revealed that 75 of the top 100 U.S. advertisers on X as of October 2022 have ceased their ad expenditures on the platform.
Introducing the Grok AI chatbot could be a strategic move to retain X’s user base, which is at risk of migrating to other social media platforms. Competitors like the decentralized Mastodon and Bluesky, or Meta’s Threads—which saw a surge to over 130 million monthly users by the end of 2023—are significant contenders.
While Musk has shared that Grok will be made available to Premium subscribers, he did not specify an exact launch date, stating only that it would be activated “later this week” for all Premium users.
X Premium, priced at $8 monthly or $84 annually on the web, represents the platform’s mid-level subscription offering. Until now, access to the Grok chatbot was an exclusive feature of the higher-priced Premium+ tier, which costs $16 monthly or $168 annually.
Grok stands out because it engages with a range of topics that other AI chatbots typically avoid, such as conspiracy theories and contentious political issues. Musk characterizes Grok’s responses as having “a rebellious streak,” reflecting a unique approach to user interaction. A notable feature of Grok is its ability to tap into real-time data from X, a capability that its competitors lack.
However, the attractiveness and utility of this real-time data access might be waning if X continues to see a decline in its user base under Musk’s leadership.
