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The name comes from the science fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” (1961) by Robert A. Heinlein. In the context of the book, “grok” means to understand something so deeply that it becomes part of you. But “the inspiration, as they explained, comes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the novel by Douglas Adams, the Bible for sci-tech enthusiasts. Elon Musk’s new artificial intelligence chatbot, more than a nerd, appears to be gifted with great irony and humor and knows everything about X. The chatbot can access the social network acquired by Elon Musk and will initially be available only to the highest level of subscribers to his platform social media. «It is a huge advantage compared to other models» because «it loves sarcasm», wrote the Tesla owner in a post on make jokes and humorous responses.
In addition to having received a deliberately rude personality and capable of giving inappropriate answers, he has access to all the contents of the X platform. A power that gives the Ai system a huge advantage over other models, trained largely on old data archives collected on the internet. But only because it brings it closer to the media and insider debate that happens every day on X.
Despite the initial enthusiasm, some tech magazines have raised concerns about Grok’s rushed development and limited lineup. With only 33 billion parameters and two months of training, some question whether it can compete with other, more established models like the GPT-4. Furthermore, there is a risk that an emphasis on humor could compromise the accuracy of the information provided.
In fact, his desire to be irreverent and politically incorrect at all costs is controversial. Those who have tried it have underlined that the answers, when they are not sarcastic, are sometimes decidedly inappropriate.
Musk said Grok, which is in early testing and not available to the general public, will eventually be released to subscribers to X’s top-tier subscription service, Premium+.