Elon Musk’s Snarky New Chatbot Grok Sparks Controversy But Hints at Marketing Potential
The launch of Grok, an AI chatbot from Elon Musk’s research lab xAI, arrives with the usual Musk-style hype, intrigue and controversy. Conceived as a more grounded alternative to ChatGPT, early impressions sparked accusations around political bias, code scraping and very human foibles.
Uhhh. Tell me that Grok is literally just ripping OpenAI's code base lol. This is what happened when I tried to get it to modify some malware for a red team engagement. Huge if true. #GrokX pic.twitter.com/4fHOc9TVOz
— Jax Winterbourne (@JaxWinterbourne) December 9, 2023
But the biggest takeaway for marketers may be Grok’s ability to generate answers using the latest real-time information from X, pointing to fresh conversational content possibilities.
Designed for Wit not Wokeness
Musk originally positioned Grok as counterprogramming to ChatGPT’s more polished but potentially problematic responses. However some early answers returned decidedly more left-leaning perspectives, contrary to the branding.
Grok's political preferences are similar to those of ChatGPT pic.twitter.com/3x4vDKJzWG
— David Rozado (@DavidRozado) December 8, 2023
Snarky Tweets as Fuel
Unique from other chatbots, Grok accesses tweets to power more timely responses. While concerning around potential misinformation, this ability to summarize reactions, news or shared links around trending topics offers useful research input for creative marketing teams.
Early Flubs Expected
As a newly launched model still in beta development stages expecting hiccups, marketers would be wise to monitor Grok’s improvements over 2023/24 before integrating responses into client deliverables.
But the conceptual foundations around taming AI bias via transparency while enabling access to continually updating information streams hints at the next evolution of generative capabilities to complement human collaborators.
Same query on Grok, ChatGPT, and Bard! 🤯
— Bindu Reddy (@bindureddy) December 7, 2023
We are vastly underestimating the power of real-time data. Grok nails it!
h/t Scobleizer pic.twitter.com/mWH8FMFxIG
For now Grok entertains as much as informs, but focusing debate around responsible growth better serves society than short-term provocation. The more voices contributing constructively, the brighter this shared future can become.
Grok AI chatbot is available for Premium + subscribers of the X platform in the US, starting at $16 per month. The chatbot is designed to give “spicy” answers in a “rebellious” way and provides information from the X platform in real time.
