Today, the most watched news in the tech world is undoubtedly xAI's launch of the Grok-3 large model. It is said that this AI model has human-like thinking abilities, and the key is that it adopts the "chain of thought" technology, which can decompose complex tasks layer by layer like peeling an onion for in-depth analysis, a bit like OpenAI's o3 and Deepseek-r1.
Speaking of Grok-3, we have to mention its creator, Elon Musk. This big guy directly claimed that Grok-3 is "the smartest artificial intelligence on Earth", and even added that it's "a little scary smart". He believes that Grok-3's reasoning ability is very powerful, and that none of the AI models he has tested so far 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 was released in August 2024. And this time, Grok-3 is the latest upgraded version of the series.
Speaking of OpenAI, it can be said to be the leader in the AI field today. And there is a story that has to be told between it and Musk, and the birth of Grok is also related to this origin.
OpenAI was originally founded in San Francisco in 2015 by Sam Altman, Musk, and 5 other people, with a joint investment of $1 billion at the time. At that time, OpenAI and Musk were in their "honeymoon period". It is said that Sam wanted to attract talents with high salaries, and Musk gave his support without hesitation! Joining OpenAI at that time, in addition to a $300,000 annual salary, you could also get SpaceX stock, which was a very generous treatment.
OpenAI's original vision was to become a non-profit organization, open-source technology, and develop AI that is beneficial to humanity. But later, OpenAI gradually transformed into a closed-source, for-profit company. This made Musk quite dissatisfied, believing that OpenAI had changed its taste and had become an "appendage" of large companies such as Microsoft. Later, Musk was excluded from the OpenAI board of directors. Although he said he was still willing to invest, the rift had already occurred, which was one of the reasons why he later created Grok.
In March 2019, OpenAI officially announced its transformation 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 intentions, only care about making money, and ignore the potential risks brought about by AI. He also sarcastically suggested that OpenAI be renamed "CloseAI".
On February 10 this year, Musk proposed to acquire OpenAI for $97.4 billion, but was rejected and countered by Sam, who claimed to acquire Musk's Twitter. If Musk had really acquired OpenAI, it is estimated that he would directly open source OpenAI, which would undoubtedly be a good thing for the entire AI field.
In short, 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 circle. As for how powerful Grok-3 is, you can try it yourself!
Use Grok for free on the web
Official website address: https://grok.com
Currently, the web chat function is open for free, and it can be used without logging in and paying. However, for some well-known reasons, domestic users may need to use scientific internet access to visit.
Use API to call Grok
The API is compatible with the OpenAI SDK, just replace the API URL with https://api.x.ai/v1
Then create an API KEY on this page: https://console.x.ai
The available models include: grok-2-latest, grok-2-vision-latest and grok-3.