xAI, Elon Musk's AI Startup, to Be Integrated With X; Will Be Available as Standalone App

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI will be integrated into his social media platform X and also be available as a standalone app, he said on Sunday in a post.

The billionaire also said xAI released its first AI model, a bot named Grok, after making it available to all X Premium+ subscribers on Friday.

The startup aims to create AI tools that 'assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge' and that Grok has been designed to answer questions with a bit of wit.

Musk who has criticized Big Tech's AI efforts as ridden with censorship, in July launched xAI, calling it a "maximum truth-seeking AI" that tries to understand the nature of the universe to rival Google's Bard and Microsoft's Bing AI.

"Grok has real-time access to info via the X platform, which is a massive advantage over other models," Musk added.

X, the social media firm formerly known as Twitter which Musk owns, is separate from xAI, but the companies work closely together. xAI also works with his electric car maker Tesla and other companies.

Last week Musk told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak he thought AI was "the most disruptive force in history." The technology will be able to "do everything" and make employment as we know it today a thing of the past, Musk speculated at the first global AI Safety Summit, in Bletchley Park, England.

In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which has created a frenzy for generative AI technology around the world, but stepped down from the board in 2018.

© Thomson Reuters 2023