 "Elon Musk's xAI to launch standalone app for Grok AI chat bot: Report")
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is reportedly preparing to launch a standalone app for its Grok AI chatbot. According to The Verge, citing a report by The Wall Street Journal, the app could debut as early as December, positioning xAI to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Unlike competitors such as OpenAI, which already offer standalone apps for Android and iOS, Grok is currently only accessible on X (formerly Twitter). Additionally, there is no free-tier option, as access to Grok is bundled with X Premium and Premium Plus subscriptions. However, the company may be exploring a free version of the chatbot. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that the free version of Grok has started appearing on X in select regions, including New Zealand.
According to the report, X has introduced usage limits for the free version of Grok in regions where it is available. Users can make up to 10 queries every two hours with the Grok-2 AI model and up to 20 queries every two hours with the Grok-2 mini model. Additionally, the chatbot allows three image analysis queries per day. The free version is restricted to users with accounts that are at least seven days old and linked to a phone number. While currently available in select regions, the free version is expected to roll out to more locations soon.
xAI launched the Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini AI models in August, incorporating image-generation capabilities into the chatbot. In October, the company introduced image-understanding features, enabling users to upload images and ask the chatbot questions about them. Elon Musk has also confirmed ongoing development to add document understanding to Grok AI, allowing it to retrieve information from files such as PDFs and Word documents.