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Grok logo displayed on a laptop screen and Elon Musk account on X displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 8, 2023.
What the Grok is going on?
If you’ve been on X this past week, you might have seen some strange and disturbing images: a MAGA hat-wearing Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer on the beach, former President Barack Obama threatening President Joe Biden with a knife, or maybe Microsoft founder Bill Gates sniffing copious amounts of cocaine.
You can thank Grok, the AI chatbot made by Elon Musk’s startup xAI. Paying X subscribers get access to Grok and its new image-generation technology. Musk has long boasted that Grok is “anti-woke” – whatever that means – and that’s currently manifesting in very few content moderation guardrails for its output. OpenAI’s Dall-E, by contrast, has plenty of rules, some of which bar users from making images of politicians or of copyrighted material. That reduces the company’s liability while also preventing the spread of disinformation. (Grok reportedly has some restrictions, such as banning nudity, but hasn’t publicly detailed its exact content policies.)
Grok’s new capabilities are courtesy of an open-source text-to-image model called Flux, made by the German startup Black Forest Labs. The company only launched on Aug. 1 but already has plans to expand into text-to-video creation as well.
While images of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris eating ice cream in their bathing suits might seem painfully obvious as fakes, there’s still the possibility that harder-to-detect AI-generated media could disrupt the upcoming elections in November. Trump is already using AI-generated images to make false claims, such as that pop star Taylor Swift endorsed him! Recklessness by AI companies might make that an inevitability rather than an open question.Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and owner of X, looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on May 6, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Tesla’s Grok infusion, New Jersey wants AI jobs, Visa’s fraud-busting, In-Cohere-nt strategy
5 billion: Elon Musk wants the Tesla board of directors to invest $5 billion in xAI, his artificial intelligence startup that built the Grok chatbot. Tesla’s self-driving ambitions depend on artificial intelligence, but this move also represents Musk’s ambition to further intermingle his many businesses. Grok lives entirely within X, formerly Twitter, and is available to paying subscribers.
500 million: The Garden State is making a half-billion dollar bet to become a hub for AI. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law on June 25 that allocates $500 million in tax credits for artificial intelligence companies and data centers willing to come to the state. It’s part of Murphy’s ongoing “AI Moonshot” to bring more AI jobs to the state.
40 billion: Visa says that artificial intelligence and machine learning helped it double its fraud detection in a year. Between October 2022 and September 2023, the payments company prevented $40 billion in fraud, double what they prevented the year prior. While AI can certainly help fraudsters trick people into handing over their credit card details or other sensitive information, it can also help financial services companies monitor and prevent irregular activity.
500 million: The AI startup Cohere, which makes enterprise AI tools, raised $500 million last week based on a $5.5 billion valuation. But the next day, it laid off 20 employees — about 5% of the company. The company called the decision “necessary” to ensure it remains “highly competitive and at the forefront of the industry.”
People walk behind the logo of SoftBank Corp in Tokyo.
Hard Numbers: SoftBank’s hardy investment, Grok gets cash infusion, Humane’s rescue plan, Kenya’s tech upgrade, News Corp and OpenAI strike a deal
6 billion: Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has raised $6 billion from venture capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, plus Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Kingdom Holding Company. The new funding round boosts the value of xAI, which makes the AI chatbot Grok, to $24 billion. Musk is a cofounder of OpenAI but severed ties with the firm in 2018 and has since sued the ChatGPT maker, alleging it abandoned its founding principles.
750 million: Humane, the company that recently released an AI-powered pin to scathing reviews, is reportedly looking for a buyer to swoop in. While customers have to cough up $699 for the signature pin, a corporate buyer would need to pay between $750 million and $1 billion — if the company’s current management fetches any interest, that is.
1 billion: Microsoft and the UAE-based tech giant G42 are pouring $1 billion into a geothermal-powered data center in Kenya. This East African investment is the first big announcement since Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 in April, a deal brokered by the Biden administration. Microsoft and G42 also pledged to work on local language and skills training initiatives with the Kenyan government and companies in the country.
250 million: OpenAI struck a licensing deal with News Corp., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, reportedly worth $250 million over five years. News Corp’s stock rose on the announcement, and the deal represents a burgeoning revenue stream for news companies. But the deal isn’t without critics: The Information’s founder Jessica Lessin wrote that publishers like News Corp need to know their worth with AI companies, hungry for content, and not rush into any deal for “relative pennies.”
FILE PHOTO: Tesla and SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk pauses during an in-conversation event with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London, Britain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023.
Musk takes OpenAI to court
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman late last week, saying that they breached the terms of a contract by prioritizing their profits over the public good. In 2015, Musk helped found and fund OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research lab-turned-industry leader. He resigned as co-chair of the company’s nonprofit board of directors in 2018, citing conflicts of interest with his own company, Tesla, which was investing heavily in AI.
Now, Musk alleges that OpenAI violated the terms under which he gave money to OpenAI, but no one seems to have written down those terms.
The Verge points out that the complaint hinges on the violation of a “Founding Agreement,” an alleged oral contract that Musk feels was formed in the course of business discussions. If a court finds that a contract was formed – and courts aren’t usually friendly to oral contracts – Musk is requesting that the court compel OpenAI to revert back to its original nonprofit mission, including making research data publicly available, instead of the profit-motivated one that’s turned it into a $80 billion juggernaut.
There’s one other thing that Musk-watchers should keep in mind: Musk currently runs an AI startup of his own, xAI, which has a chatbot called Grok. This means his business directly competes with OpenAI. Is it any wonder he’s resorting to litigation that could take OpenAI down a peg?