6 things Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok 2 can do that ChatGPT can’t
You probably know that xAI is Elon Musk’s new artificial intelligence company, launched in July 2023. But you may not know that Grok-2, xAI’s latest AI model, is slowly rolling out on X (formerly Twitter) for premium users. Its advantage over other LLMs is that it has been trained on billions of tweets and real-time data on X.
Rowan Cheung is founder of The Rundown, a fast-growing AI newsletter that provides an in-depth look at the latest developments in AI. In less than two years, The Rundown has amassed over 500,000 subscribers who rely on its content to stay up to date on the latest advances in artificial intelligence.
Cheung was given early beta access to Grok-2, X’s new AI chatbot, and said he could see it “completely changing the way we use the platform at some point.” Here are six things it can do that ChatGPT can’t, according to Cheung.
Grok-2 versus ChatGPT: What can it do that OpenAI’s LLM can’t?
1. Real-time search on X
Grok-2 has access to real-time information on X, which makes perfect sense. It’s a huge database of content from millions of sources that other LLMs like ChatGPT simply don’t have. We’ve yet to see how xAI chooses what data to feed to Grok, but it’s likely based on tweets with relatively high impressions and engagement; those that performed better.
Twitter has been around since 2006 and an average of 200 billion tweets are posted each year. That’s a lot of data to potentially include, including a lot of information from academics and high-profile figures as well as news outlets that other LLMs simply don’t have access to.
2. Unfiltered images
“Grok-2 can generate unfiltered images through its integration with FLUX,” Cheung said. ChatGPT and DALL-E 3 cannot. This means Grok-2 can generate images of real people, including celebrities and politicians, and can create images with potentially sensitive or controversial content. However, there also seem to be few restrictions on generating images that could infringe copyrights or trademarks.
If you’re limited by the images generated by ChatGPT or aren’t happy with the output, Grok-2 might help you add variety. But check what you see online even more carefully, because fake images are rife with this feature.
3. Dual modes
Grok-2 gives you access to two modes, a normal mode and a “fun” mode. Although it is similar to the regular Grok model, the chatbot’s fun mode has a more distinct personality. Cheung claims it is “more entertaining than ChatGPT’s boring responses.”
Have fun with a fun LLM and maybe you’ll come up with some crazy ideas for growing your business that ChatGPT would never have thought of.
4. Reference posts
“Grok not only summarizes news, but also references the tweets it pulled the data from,” Cheung explained. Anyone who has used ChatGPT for important information knows how crucial references can be. Exclusive access to X’s data gives Grok a big advantage over ChatGPT in this regard. Cheung says, “It would be really cool to see revenue sharing for frequently referenced tweets.”
ChatGPT normally does not link at all, but this allows for better fact-checking and tracing of content threads back to the original source. Grok-2 will be closer to Perplexity with this functionality.
5. Direct X integration
Grok-2 integrates directly with X and has its own tab within the platform on web and mobile. For X nerds, this is actually a big advantage, according to Cheung. There is also an “Ask Grok” button in posts that summarizes each post in seconds.
If you spend a lot of time using X, it makes sense to have your LLM right next to you. As we become AI-native, not only do we not want to constantly switch between apps, we also demand higher functionality from each tool.
6. Roasting X-profiles
Yes, that’s right! Since Grok is built right into X, you can ask it to roast any X handle (and even request the worst tweets ever). To do this, you’ll need Grok in “fun mode”.
This feature provides entertainment but also shows the power of Grok-2 and will surely make users want to try out the new LLM. Do you dare to blow up your own tweets?
Which AI chatbot is better: Grok-2 or ChatGPT?
xAI claims, “At the time of this blog post, it outperforms both Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4-Turbo,” but Cheung doesn’t believe Grok-2 is better than ChatGPT in most cases, even with this functionality. “If you’re using it for any of the use cases mentioned above, yes, but in general, not yet,” he said. “OpenAI is still leading the LLM race right now, although xAI has been seriously closing that gap.”
If you are a Premium X user, you will be able to use Grok-2 for these six uses and more very soon.
