Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot now free for all on X

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has expanded access to its Grok AI chatbot, making it available to all users on X (formerly Twitter), including those on the free-tier plan. This means that users without a paid subscription can now generate text and images using the chatbot, although there are certain usage limitations in place.

Grok AI, developed by xAI and launched in November 2023, is powered by the Grok 2 AI model, which was unveiled in August. The chatbot can respond to text prompts, engage in conversations, and generate images. In a significant update in October, xAI added image-understanding capabilities to Grok, allowing users to upload images and ask questions related to them, further enhancing the bot’s functionality.

The Grok AI can be accessed through a dedicated section on X, available both on the mobile app and the web platform. Users can view their chat history and generated images in an accessible gallery, making it easier to revisit past interactions and creations.

For those on the free-tier plan, Grok AI offers limited usage. Users can submit up to 10 text prompts every two hours and generate up to three images. Once these limits are reached, users either need to subscribe to a premium plan or wait for the cooldown period to pass before they can use the chatbot again. The free version of Grok utilizes the Grok 2 AI model for text generation and the FLUX model for image creation.

In addition to these updates, xAI has introduced the “Aurora” image model, which is currently available in beta for select users. This model creates more photorealistic images, with fewer restrictions compared to FLUX, although it is still subject to usage limits for free-tier users.

Elon Musk has also confirmed that xAI is working on adding document-understanding capabilities to Grok, allowing it to extract information from files such as PDFs and Word documents. Moreover, there are reports that xAI is developing a standalone Grok AI app, which would compete with other popular AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google Gemini.