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Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, now allows free access to the Grok AI chatbot for all users following its recent decision that could indicate attempts by the platform to expand its user base and draw more attention to its AI. The Grok chatbot is developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, which was previously only accessible for premium, paid subscribers. Grok is currently testing its service with free users in some areas, including New Zealand.
Over the weekend, some users and app researchers reported they could access Grok without a premium membership. More recently, confirmed that X has been trialing such expanded access in New Zealand, but some ‘freemium’ access is still restricted to freecommunity members throughout the test period. For instance, Grok-2 model users can only make up to 10 queries in two hours, while Grok-2 mini model users can make as many as 20 queries within the same period. Besides, a free user can still pose as many as three image analysis questions per day.
To qualify for grok free access, the accounts need to meet some prerequisites: they should be at least seven days old and contain at least one linked phone number.
Some amazing things and features were introduced and featured in mid-August in Grok-2, including image generation using the Black Forest Labs’ FLUX.1 model, just extended to understand and interpret images. Earlier, these features were only accessible to paid subscribers with Premium or Premium+ plans. It seems that xAI is attempting to expand its reach by making Grok available to all free users so the platform can reach a larger user base and extend its interaction with a more extensive audience for more extensive feedback.
In such a scenario, the current decision of Grok opening up to a non-premium user appears to be forced by a desire of xAI to challenge most of the popular AI models in the market that have been very much in the limelight, include ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. As it receives more data and speeds up the feedback cycle, it would like Grok along with its AI capabilities to more refined.
However, making Grok available to the masses would enable X to also gain more user engagement and follow the ever-rising pace of AI, thus becoming a pioneer in the AI-driven chatbot space.
