Following Elon Musk’s xAI move to open source its long-language model Grok earlier in March, the X owner said on Tuesday that the company formerly known as Twitter will soon offer its Grok chatbot to more paying subscribers. In a post on XMusk announced that Grok will become available to Premium subscribers this week, not just those in the highest tier, Premium+, as before.
The move could signal a desire for more direct competition with other popular chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude. But it could also be a sign that X is trying to increase its subscriber numbers. The news comes at a time when data shows fewer people are using Platform X and it’s struggling to retain those who do. According to recent data from Sensor Tower, NBC News reported, X usage in the US was down 18% year-over-year in February and 23% since Musk’s acquisition.
Musk’s war on advertisers may also have hurt the company’s revenue prospects, as Sensor Tower found it 75 of the top 100 US advertisers on X as of October 2022 were no longer spending ad budget on the platform.
Offering access to an AI chatbot could potentially prevent X users from fleeing to other platforms – such as decentralized platforms Mastodon and Bluesky or Instagram’s Threads, which quickly gained traction thanks to Meta’s resources to reach over 130 million monthly users by Q4 2023.
Musk didn’t say when Grok will be available to X users, only that it will “activate” for all Premium subscribers sometime “later this week.”
X Premium is the company’s mid-range membership starting at $8 per month (online) or $84 per year. Previously, Grok was only available to Premium+ subscribers, at $16 per month or $168 per year.
Grok’s chatbot may appeal to Musk fans and heavy X users, as it will answer questions about topics that are usually off-limits to other AI chatbots, such as conspiracies or more controversial political ideas. It will also answer questions with “a revolutionary series,” as Musk has described it. More specifically, Grok has the ability to access X data in real time – something that rivals cannot offer.
Of course, the value of this data over Musk’s reign may diminish if X loses users.
