Is Musk's Grok AI paving the way for an ad-free X?

Elon Musk has teased the incoming launch of ‘Grok’, a LLM to compete with ChatGPT currently being developed by his AI startup, xAI.

In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), the billionaire founder of Tesla said that the system will become available to all X Premium+ subscribers once it’s out of early beta testing.

According to Musk, Grok has real-time access to information via the X platform, enabling it to search for up-to-date information about almost any topic. Musk said in an X post that this is “a major advantage over other [LLM] models”.

The LLM is also designed to have “a little humour in its responses”, on display here.

With Musk rumoured to be introducing a paid subscription for all X users, amid reports of plummeting ad revenue, the addition of access to Grok as part of an X subscription may well be a tactic intended to draw more subscribers to the platform.

Should xAI’s Grok take off in the same fashion as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, X could begin shifting away from reliance on ad-investment dollars towards becoming an ad-free social media platform populated entirely with paid users. But is this realistic? And will something like Grok really move the needle the way Musk intends?

“It [Grok] will be valuable for those seeking a more engaging response to their queries”

Ian Liddicoat, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Data Science at Adludio, believes that although Grok’s reliance on the web means it won’t be perfect, the addition of humour to an LLM could serve as a useful point of difference for attracting users.

He said: “Grok is a great addition to the LLM (Large Language Modelling) marketplace and has been built in an impressively short amount of time. It would seem to be ahead of GPT3.5, but perhaps behind GPT4 and Meta’s offering. Nevertheless, it stands out by addressing more complex questions and infusing more humour in its responses. This reflects the Musk personality in many ways and is indicative of the broad X user base that the model has been trained on.

“With access to the web, Grok can give contradictory responses, but this will improve with later releases. Although Grok is for premium users, and behind a paywall at this stage, it will be valuable for researchers and for those seeking a more engaging response to their queries.”

Suzanna Chaplin, CEO at esbconnect, echoed much of Liddicoat’s sentiment, outlining Grok as a tool that highlights Musk’s “ability to engage and to market a product”.

She said: "Using sarcasm will create virality as people share responses – remember when everyone asked Siri to sing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody? Like his 'fart mode' on the Telsa, it's these unusual quirks that drive the noise and the engagement behind a product – not the easily comparable and standard features. Whether Grok is any good is another question but I am sure we will be reading a lot about it.”

“Not convinced an LLM is the win they’ll be hoping for”

Chris Andrews, Head of Advertising Technology at Wake The Bear, offered a more pessimistic view: "There’s no doubt X/Twitter needs to pull a rabbit out of the hat to get bigger advertisers back to the platform after a bruising year haemorrhaging users, revenue and value. I’m not convinced an LLM trained on the deepest recesses of X/Twitter and a tone seemingly modelled on Musk is the win they’ll be hoping for.

"Advertisers concerned about poor brand safety and a (somehow) even worse ad experience will probably hope Musk’s proposed investments to build AI “in a good way” will mean more time spent on rooting out spam ads and bad actors and offering more effective targeting and measurement, rather than whimsy that flirts with legal action from Douglas Adams’ estate.”

Chaplin appears to have hit the nail on the head. Grok will get everybody talking and the undoubtedly meme-worthy content will entice people to try it but ultimately, the LLM’s ability to draw more paid users to X will largely rely on whether or not “it’s any good”.