xAI has announced an upgrade to its Grok AI chatbot, with the new version promising improved performance that the company says will rival Sonnet 3.5 in prompt following capabilities.
The upgraded model is available for free to all users of the X platform, with premium subscribers receiving higher usage limits and additional features. xAI reports that Grok-2 is three times faster than its predecessor, while offering improved accuracy and expanded language support.
Grok now cites legacy media
Grok-2 now incorporates information from both X posts and external sites, particularly news sources, to provide more up-to-date and detailed responses. The system includes source citations with its answers.
xAI has not disclosed whether it has payment arrangements with publishers for the use of their content. AI search competitors such as OpenAI and Perplexity do have such arrangements.
The update also introduces a new Grok button feature designed to provide additional context to ongoing discussions, including the ability to explain images within conversations.
xAI has made the new grok-2-1212 and grok-2-vision-1212 models available through its API. The company also announced Aurora, a new image model designed from the ground up, which will be available through the API in the coming weeks.
Elon Musk has previously announced plans for Grok 3, saying this summer that the next iteration would be the most powerful AI model by "every metric" when it launches in 2024.
