Elon Musk brings controversial AI chatbot Grok to more X users in bid to halt exodus

Premium subscribers of all tiers for the X social media platform will soon gain access to its generative AI chatbot, Grok. Previously, the chatbot was only accessible to users who subscribed to the most expensive subscription tier, Premium+,  for $ 16 a month (approximately £12 or AU$ 25). That’s set to change, with X’s owner Elon Musk announcing the expansion of availability to the large language model (LLM) to Basic Tier and Premium Tier X users in a post. 

Grok has been made open-source, reportedly to allow researchers and developers to leverage Grok’s capabilities for their own projects and research. If you’re interested in checking out its code, you can check out the Grok-1 repository on GitHub. It’s the first major offering from Musk’s own AI venture, xAI

As Dev Technosys, a mobile app and web development company, explains, Grok is Musk’s head-on challenge to ChatGPT, with the billionaire boasting that it beat ChatGPT 3.5 on multiple benchmarks. Musk describes the chatbot as having “a focus on deep understanding and humor,” and replying to questions with a “rebellious streak.” The model is trained on a massive dataset of text and code, including real-time text from X posts (which is what Musk points to as giving the bot a unique advantage), and text data scraped from across the web such as Wikipedia articles and academic papers.

Some industry observers think that this could be a push to boost X subscriber numbers, as analysis performed by Sensor Tower and reported by NBC indicates that visitors to the platform and user retention have been dropping. This has seemingly spooked many advertisers and hit the platform’s revenues, with apparently 75 of the top 100 US advertisers cutting X from their ad budgets entirely from October 2022 onwards. 

It does look like Musk is hoping that an exclusive perk like access to such a well-informed and entertaining chatbot as Grok will convince people to become subscribers, and to keep those who are already subscribed. 

Man wearing glasses, sitting at a table and using a laptop

(Image credit: Shutterstock/fizkes)

The Elon-Musk led ChatGPT that never was

Earlier this year, Musk leveled a lawsuit against what is undoubtedly Grok’s largest competitor and the current industry leader in generative AI, OpenAI. He was an early investor in the company but departed after disagreements about several aspects, including the mission and vision for OpenAI, as well as control and equity in the company. Now, Musk asserts that OpenAI has diverted from its non-profit goals and is prioritizing corporate profits, particularly for Microsoft (a key investor and collaborator), above its other objectives –  violating a contract called the ‘Founding Agreement.’

According to Musk, the Founding Agreement laid down specific principles and commitments that OpenAI had agreed to follow. OpenAI has responded to this accusation by denying such a contract, or any similar agreement, existed with Musk at all. Its overall response to the lawsuit so far has been dismissive, characterizing it as ‘frivolous’ and alleging that Musk is driven by his own business interests. 

Apparently, it was established from early on by OpenAI that the company would transition into being a for-profit organization, as it wouldn’t be able to raise the funds necessary to build the sorts of things it was planning to as a non-profit company. OpenAI claims Musk was not only aware of these plans and was consulted when they were being made, but that he was seeking to have majority equity in OpenAI, wanted to control the board of directors at the time, and wanted to assume the position of CEO. 

Elon Musk wearing a suit and walking in New York

(Image credit: Shutterstock/photosince)

Elon Musk's Grok gambit

Musk didn’t give an exact date for Grok’s wider rollout, but according to Tech Crunch, it’s due sometime at the end of this week. Having seen what Musk considers funny, many people are morbidly curious about what sort of artificial intelligence Grok offers. One other aspect of Grok that might concern (or please, depending on your point of view) people is that it will respond to queries and topics that have been made off-limits for the most part with other chatbots, including controversial political ideas and conspiracy theories. 

The sourcing from X in real-time is one unique advantage that Grok has, although before Musk’s takeover, this would have arguably been a much bigger prize.

Despite my misgivings, Grok does give users another option of chatbot to choose from, and more competition in this emerging field could spur on more innovation as companies battle to win users.

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Windows 11 is getting a controversial Windows 10 feature that some people accuse of being pointless bloat

Good news – Windows 11 users are getting the same additional embellishments for the lock screen that are currently rolling out in testing for Windows 10.

Essentially, these are compact lock screen cards that display various bits of info relating to the weather, finance, traffic, and sports scores. Microsoft is now deploying them in the Release Preview channel for Windows 11 test builds, as reliable Windows leaker PhantomOfEarth noticed on X (formerly Twitter).

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They are currently rolling out in testing, so not everyone will see the cards just yet. As for the functionality itself, it’s the same deal as in Windows 10 – you can either turn off the cards, or turn them on, but you’ll have the lot if they’re enabled.

You can’t pick and choose which cards are shown, and, for example, dump the finance one if you don’t care for it – this is an all-or-nothing scenario.

While PhantomOfEarth pointed out the cards in testing, Windows Latest also picked up on this, claiming that this feature is part of the March 2024 optional update, and it’ll be rolled out fully in next month’s cumulative update as a result. That’ll be for all users of Windows 11, not just testers (if it happens).


Analysis: A better layout, but that’s unlikely to mollify haters

Windows Latest further notes that the cards will be enabled by default when the April cumulative update arrives for Windows 11 (and presumably that’ll be the case for Windows 10 users, too). However, if you hate the idea of these info cards on the lock screen, you can turn off the feature.

What also won’t go down well with some is that clicking the cards opens up more details, but they’re fired up in the Edge browser (and MSN within it). This is another opportunity Microsoft is leveraging to promote Edge in other words (and inevitably it’ll be demanding to be your default browser, from time to time).

The good news for Windows 11 users is that the implementation of the info cards is better, with them being centrally aligned on the lock screen, with the time and date also aligned above. It’s a much neater look than on Windows 10, which seems clunky in comparison, but then Microsoft’s focus is obviously on its newer OS, with worrying about the finer points of layout on the older version of Windows clearly not a priority.

As raised previously when we discussed the Windows 10 incarnation of this lock screen feature, Microsoft will hopefully work on the ability to fine-tune the options in terms of specifying the cards you want, and those you don’t need displayed, rather than being forced to have them all on, or none.

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Windows 11 gets a troubleshooting tool for one of its most controversial spec requirements

Windows 11 requires the TPM 2.0 security feature (at least officially), but what if you’re having trouble with that particular chip (which remains a controversial system requirement)?

Well, help could soon be at hand, at least going by a new feature spotted in testing – by ever-present leaker PhantomOfEarth on Twitter – with Windows 11’s latest build (25905) in the Canary channel.

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As you can see, the Windows Security app now carries a ‘TPM troubleshooter’ option. As the text for the feature lets us know, this is useful for finding and fixing problems with your TPM 2.0 module.

For the uninitiated, TPM (which stands for Trusted Platform Module) can be a separate hardware chip, or firmware TPM (fTPM) that uses your CPU, and it’s a system that provides tighter security for your PC. (There’s a lot more to it than that, mind, but that’s the gist).

Why is TPM 2.0 so controversial, then? Because a lot of older PCs don’t have it – or even not-all-that-old machines – and people feel that being forced to upgrade (either their motherboard and CPU, or adding a TPM security chip) is an unfair stipulation to get Windows 11. (Windows 10 does not have this requirement, of course).

Microsoft, however, has made it quite clear that beefing up security requires TPM 2.0, and argues that this is something implemented for the good of users, and protecting them against being exploited by hackers.


Analysis: A handy extra to help with TPM woes (we hope)

What might this troubleshooter actually do, then? Well, as Neowin, which spotted the tweet revealing the presence of this feature in testing, points out, it’s possible to encounter odd errors with TPM. For example: “Can’t get TPM information. Contact your device manufacturer.”

That’s not a very helpful error message, and with the new feature, what you’ll be able to do is fire up a Windows troubleshooter to look further into the issue. Hopefully, that might give you further clues as to what’s gone awry (and maybe even solve the problem, with any luck – though Microsoft’s troubleshooters are not always that reliable).

Whatever the case, having some help on-hand is certainly better than nothing (plus there’s another option here to reset your TPM back to default settings, too). Provided, of course, this feature makes the cut for the release version of Windows 11, if it proves useful and well-received in testing. Currently, we’re told that this capability is a limited rollout, so not every Canary channel tester is seeing the TPM troubleshooter.

That’s not unusual, as with many features, Microsoft deploys them to only a small subset of testers to begin with, just to check if there are any major problems, and to monitor early feedback.

Given the controversy around TPM 2.0 – and the fact that it’ll definitely be a requirement for Windows 12 too – we can guess that this troubleshooter is likely to be something that’ll appear in the finished version of Windows 11. Because anything that makes running TPM a smoother experience has to be useful.

This functionality could even pitch up in the 23H2 update, which we’ve just heard some news on – something that makes us think that the Copilot AI, which is rumored for inclusion in 23H2, won’t actually be part of that upgrade due later this year.

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