The biggest news in tech today is undoubtedly the launch of xAI's Grok-3 large language model. This AI model is said to possess human-like reasoning capabilities, mainly due to its adoption of "chain-of-thought" techniques. It can break down complex tasks layer by layer, like peeling an onion, to perform in-depth analysis, somewhat similar to OpenAI's o3 and Deepseek-r1.
Speaking of Grok-3, we must mention its creator, Elon Musk. This tech mogul directly declared Grok-3 as "the smartest AI on Earth," even adding that it's "scarily smart." He believes Grok-3's reasoning ability is incredibly powerful, and none of the AI models he's tested can match it.
The Grok series was launched by Musk in 2023, with the clear goal of challenging OpenAI's ChatGPT. Grok-1 was released in November 2023, and Grok-2 followed in August 2024. This Grok-3 is the latest upgraded version in the series.
When it comes to OpenAI, it's a leader in the current AI field. And its story with Musk is worth mentioning. The birth of Grok is also related to this history.
OpenAI was initially founded in San Francisco in 2015 by Sam Altman, Musk, and five others, with a collective investment of $1 billion. At that time, OpenAI and Musk were in a "honeymoon" phase. It is said that Sam wanted to attract talent with high salaries, and Musk unhesitatingly supported him! Joining OpenAI at that time meant not only a $300,000 annual salary but also SpaceX stock, making the package quite generous.
OpenAI's initial vision was to be a non-profit organization, open-sourcing technology and developing AI that benefits humanity. However, OpenAI gradually transformed into a closed-source, for-profit company. This greatly dissatisfied Musk, who felt that OpenAI had changed its tune and become an "appendage" of large companies like Microsoft. Later, Musk was excluded from the OpenAI board, and although he expressed his willingness to continue investing, a rift had formed, which is one of the reasons he later created Grok.
In March 2019, OpenAI officially announced its transition from "non-profit" to "limited profit," with a profit cap of 100 times the investment amount. Musk has publicly criticized OpenAI, believing that they have forgotten their original intention, focusing only on making money and ignoring the potential risks of AI. He even sarcastically suggested that OpenAI be renamed "CloseAI."
On February 10th of this year, Musk offered to acquire OpenAI for $97.4 billion but was rejected and countered by Sam, who claimed he wanted to acquire Musk's Twitter. If Musk had actually acquired OpenAI, he would probably have open-sourced it directly, which would undoubtedly have been a good thing for the entire AI field.
In conclusion, the release of Grok-3 is a major event in the AI field. The "love-hate relationship" between Musk and OpenAI has also added a lot of talking points to the AI community. As for how powerful Grok-3 really is, you can try it out for yourself!
Use Grok for Free on the Web
Official website: https://grok.com
The web chat function is currently open for free, without the need to log in or pay. However, due to some well-known reasons, users in China may need a VPN to access it.
Using the Grok API
The API is compatible with the OpenAI SDK. Simply replace the API URL with https://api.x.ai/v1
Then create an API KEY on this page: https://console.x.ai
Available models include: grok-2-latest, grok-2-vision-latest, and grok-3.