X Is Testing a Free Version of Its AI Chatbot GrokAI

Key Takeaways

• GrokAI, which was only available to Premium users up until now, might soon be available to free users.
• X is apparently testing a free version of the app with some users and researchers in New Zealand. However, the company has yet to release an official confirmation.
• The free access comes with certain restrictions and prerequisites. For example, your account needs to be at least 7 days old and you need to have your phone number linked.

X might soon release a free version of Grok AI. There's no official news from the company yet but there are rumors that the company is contemplating making AI more accessible and is currently testing a free version of the AI chatbot. For now, it's only available to Premium users.

The news comes after multiple researchers and users from New Zealand reported that they were able to access the chatbot for free.

This could mean that even if this news is true, it will probably be available to only selected users from certain regions for now.

More About the Test Version

Since it's the free version, it obviously comes with a few limits. An X user shared their experience and posted the limitations.

• You can only ask 10 queries every hour on the Grok-2 model and 20 queries every hour on the Grok-2 mini model.
• You can analyze up to 3 images per day.
• Your account needs to be at least 7 days old.
• You must have your phone number linked to your account in order to access this free version.

We still don't know if or when a free version will be rolled out. But if it does, it will finally allow GrokAI to open its doors to a wider user base and compete with bigger players like ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Gemini.

About GrokAI

The AI chatbot by Elon Musk-owned X was launched in November 2023. And recently, in August this year, an image processing and analyzing feature was added.

Currently, it's only available to X's Premium and Premium+ subscribers. The Premium plan is priced at $8 per month or $84 per year and the Premium+ plan is priced at $16 per month or $168 per year.

After the image generation feature was added, the company received a lot of backlash since there weren't enough guardrails to prevent users from generating controversial images - from Barack Obama shown doing drugs to Mickey Mouse carrying a gun.

So this brings us to a bigger question: is it really safe to make GrokAI publicly available for free?

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