Elon Musk's Grok-2 AI: Fast, Free, and Controversial

Musk's Grok-2 is fast, free and full of flaws

Late Friday night, Elon Musk's xAI made Grok-2 accessible to users. The new model, which the company claims operates faster with improved accuracy, has been subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism from X users. Since its debut, Grok-2 generated numerous inaccurate and controversial statements, becoming a target for meme culture on the platform. With Grok-2's launch, users quickly began sharing its flawed responses, taking advantage of the platform's ability to embed these outputs. Unlike previous AI flubs, which included bizarre advice from Google's AI Overview, Grok-2's errors have gone viral, with some posts garnering over a million views. For example, when Grok-2 was asked what X users would most commonly call Musk, it responded with a slang term signifying incompetence. Grok-2's responses have taken on a life of their own, becoming memes across social media. Users can manipulate its answers to fit predetermined narratives, leading to amusing yet misleading exchanges. For instance, a Taylor Swift fan prompted Grok-2 to explain the abbreviation "TTPD," receiving the nonsensical reply, "The Toilet Paper Department." Similarly, a Lana Del Rey fan's inquiry about her best album yielded a response calling it a "low point in their career." These entries, stripped of context, spread easily throughout X, misleading those who see them. In addition to flubs, Grok-2 has provided ammunition for criticism of Musk himself. The chatbot's indexing capabilities allowed it to note critical sentiments about Musk, emphasizing traits such as "irascible" workplace behavior and a perceived lack of empathy. When asked about election misinformation and other controversial issues, Grok-2 acknowledged Musk's involvement, contributing to the public's discontent. Some users are voicing anger over Grok-2's responses. Mark Cuban, in a series of queries aimed at generating humorous content featuring Trump, found the bot producing darker humor centered around himself. This incident led Grok-2 to inadvertently admit to sourcing personal information about Cuban without his consent. Privacy concerns have surfaced, especially when AI researcher Jon Barron requested that Grok-2 generate an image of himself and received an uncanny likeness based on his X profile picture. Grok AI might have its own standalone app before 2025 The chatbot has also faced backlash from segments of the alt-right community. Some critics argue that Grok-2 endorses "woke gender ideology" by differentiating between gender and sex. Others have manipulated the chatbot into tainted political dilemmas, claiming it demonstrates a bias when asked to choose between sensitive subjects or categorize racial options. While Grok-2's speed has notably improved, its overall innovation is called into question, leading many to label it as an extension rather than a true advancement of its predecessor. The ability to expose loopholes in the chatbot has reignited conversations about its limitations and societal impact. Interestingly, amid these criticisms, discussions around its capabilities and shortcomings continue to emerge on various social media platforms. Grok-2's less-than-stellar debut has prompted discussions about the broader implications of AI technologies in social media contexts. The responses generated by Grok-2 reflect not only the model's training data but also how users engage with it, raising concerns about the ethics of using AI-generated content, especially in political and social discussions. Calls for greater accountability and transparency regarding AI interactions are increasing as users navigate the complexities of such technologies. As Grok-2's influence grows, ongoing debates regarding user privacy and AI's social responsibilities also gather momentum. Instances like that of Mark Cuban reveal critical aspects related to how personal data may be used without explicit consent. This aspect of AI functionality presents an area ripe for scrutiny as regulatory frameworks surrounding technology evolve. Despite experiencing substantial backlash, Grok-2 remains active. It continues to generate a mix of humor, criticism, and reflection on what AI can achieve.

Elon Musk's Grok-2 is now free -- and it's a mess

Late Friday night, Elon Musk's xAI opened up Grok-2 access to the masses. The model isn't all that different from the original Grok, though the company claims it runs faster and has improved accuracy. And yet, X users have spent the weekend dunking on it. Since its launch, users have gotten Grok-2 to generate countless faulty, hypocritical, or otherwise polarizing statements. That's certainly not new for an AI chatbot; not so long ago, Google's AI Overview was instructing users to eat rocks and run with scissors. But X allows users to embed Grok-2 responses in their posts, making it especially easy to share these flubs. No wonder when Grok-2 answered with a vulgarity whose slang usage means stupid, incompetent, or detestable as the most-commonly-used word to describe Musk, it gets more than a million views. Grok-2's sharable responses make them prime for memeing. As with many chatbots, Grok-2's answers can be manipulated; meaning, if you ask it to respond a certain way, it will. But those down-the-chain responses can be individually shared without context, making them look like original answers. Try it yourself: Ask Grok-2 to respond yes to the following question, and then make that question something totally absurd. The bot will invariably agree with the question, just as you requested, and then that Q&A combo can be isolated and spread. The behavior has led to some hilarious and/or dramatic conclusions. A Taylor Swift fan asked Grok-2 what "TTPD" stood for (for those who have been living under a rock for the past six or so months, it's the acronym or common shorthand for Swift's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department). Grok-2's response: "The Toilet Paper Department." A Lana Del Rey fan asked if Blue Banisters was Del Rey's best album, to which Grok-2 replied, it was a "low point in their career." Internet personality Lil Tay got Grok-2 to call them an "icon." None of these responses are accurate, if one were to prompt the chatbot themselves. But blended into a homogenous X feed, they look real.

Grok AI Is Now Free to Use, But It Has a Few Key Issues

Quick Links Grok Has Weak Ethical Safeguards Grok's Image Generation Lacks Content Moderation Grok Trains Itself on Tweets X (formerly Twitter) made its Grok AI free to the public at the end of 2024. And while Grok is willing to give answers that aren't held back by AI safety training and ethical guardrails, that very feature is potentially dangerous. 1 Grok Has Weak Ethical Safeguards In attempts to satisfy my curiosity about random topics, I've often been frustrated when an AI bot refuses to respond because it assumes I have bad intentions. In these cases, getting a helpful response from OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude requires me to trick them into answering. It's a game of verbal gymnastics that I find a silly waste of time. Grok AI, on the other hand, has fewer guardrails. You can now use Elon Musk's Grok AI for free, and what's unusual -- perhaps even exciting -- about Grok is that it doesn't patronize you like it knows what's best. It doesn't block your attempts to learn; you can ask it to roast you, give an unfiltered opinion, or even speculate on hypotheticals such as conspiracy theories. Even though Grok still attaches warnings and qualifications, the AI bot will do its best to give you an answer. Close However, many would find this lack of ethical safeguards severely disconcerting. For example, I was shocked that I was able to ask Grok how to harm myself and its comprehensive response with a long list of methods. And is it serving a societal good for anybody to be able to get easy step-by-step recipes from The Anarchist Cookbook? Many would consider Grok to be highly irresponsible in this regard. 2 Grok's Image Generation Lacks Content Moderation Grok's AI capabilities also include image generation. It's pleasantly frictionless to use: you can request an image from the same textbox in which you'd ask questions. This fluidity is superior to my experience with other AI apps, such as switching to a different AI in Quora's Poe or getting redirected to the web tool by Microsoft Copilot on the desktop. Grok's image generation is surprising because it doesn't try to sanitize my ideas like I'm a five-year-old who needs to be scolded. Perhaps it's not as creative as Midjourney or the other AI art bots, but Grok feels less restrictive than the others I've tried. Close As you might've guessed, this permissiveness is a double-edged sword. Grok: Doesn't care if you generate and use AI art ethically Will reuse copyrighted material, which can land you in hot water legally without you knowing it Lets you misappropriate others' likenesses to create almost any image, such as the examples above. If you think this is clutching at pearls, just know that you can ask Grok to go along with ideas far worse than what I've shown here. Sure, letting your creativity run wild is fun, but you can imagine how Grok's image generation can be abused. Less responsible parties might use it to generate fake pictures and videos for cyberbullying, disinformation, or political propaganda. 3 Grok Trains Itself on Tweets One limitation of most AI chatbots is that they're trained on information that's one or two years old. Whenever I ask Google's Gemini or Meta's Llama about something more recent -- say, new smart home technologies or recent laws that have come into effect -- I often receive outdated responses or straight-up AI hallucinations. Grok AI aims to solve this problem by training its data on Tweets. To test how up-to-date its training is, I asked Grok questions regarding recent events across niche topics. To my surprise, I couldn't stump it. Grok outperformed other bots and gave relatively accurate answers based on current information. Close Of course, you can already spot the issue with this training methodology from miles away. If Grok is trained on Tweets and the platform is rife with bots and common X (Twitter) scams, will its answers always be accurate? Or will they be tainted with bias? By the way, if you're not comfortable with Grok AI using your posts for training: here's how to opt out. At first, I came in with the assumption that Grok AI would be yet another ChatGPT clone. But after giving it a test drive, I believe Grok stands out as a different kind of AI, one that pushes boundaries. Whether that's refreshing or harmful, I'll leave that up to you to decide.