Social network X has so far limited its AI chatbot Grok – developed by another of Elon Musk’s companies, xAI – to paying premium users. However, it appears the platform is preparing to open up the chatbot to free users. Last weekend, several app researchers and users posted that a free version of Grok would be available in certain regions.
It has now been widely reported that X is testing access to Grok for free users, at least in New Zealand.
According to a researcher going by the name Swak, the app is able to reach 10 queries per two hours with the Grok-2 model, 20 queries per two hours with the Grok-2 mini model, and three image analysis questions per day To use Grok for free, your account must be created at least seven days ago and linked to a phone number.
xAI launched Grok-2 in August with image generation capabilities leveraging Black Forest Labs’ FLUX.1 model. Late last month, the company also gave the model the ability to understand images.
All of these features were previously only available to Premium and Premium+ users. By opening its AI Chatbot Grok to free users, xAI aims to grow its user base and speed up its product feedback cycle, allowing it to better compete with other models on the market, such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that xAI was in talks to raise billions of dollars at a valuation of $40 billion.
