Musk launches ‘scary smart’ AI Chatbot, Grok 3 to rival ChatGPT, DeepSeek

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has unveiled the latest version of his artificial intelligence company’s chatbot, Grok 3, to rival ChatGPT and China’s DeepSeek.

“Grok is to understand the universe,” Musk declared at the Grok 3 launch presentation on Monday. “We’re driven by curiosity about the nature of the universe — that’s also what causes us to be a maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”

Musk has touted Grok 3 as “scary smart,” boasting that it has ten times the computational resources of its predecessor, which was released in August last year. 

The chatbot, developed by his xAI company, was trained on synthetic data and incorporates self-correction mechanisms designed to prevent AI-generated inaccuracies—commonly referred to as “hallucinations.”

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“Grok 3 has very powerful reasoning capabilities, so in the tests that we’ve done thus far, Grok 3 is outperforming anything that’s been released, that we’re aware of, so that’s a good sign,” Musk stated in a video call last week at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

Initially, Grok 3 will be available exclusively to Premium+ subscribers of X, formerly known as Twitter, which Musk acquired in 2022. A broader rollout to other users will follow.

The upgraded chatbot enters an increasingly competitive AI landscape, where countries and companies are racing to develop more advanced and cost-effective models. 

Last month, Chinese startup DeepSeek disrupted the industry with the launch of its R1 chatbot, a low-cost, high-quality alternative that challenges US leadership in AI development.

Grok 3 also reignites Musk’s rivalry with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, putting him in direct competition with Sam Altman, a former collaborator turned fierce competitor. 

Musk was among the 11 co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, contributing $45 million to counter Google’s dominance in artificial intelligence. However, he departed three years later, and OpenAI’s groundbreaking release of ChatGPT in 2022 propelled Altman to global prominence—without Musk at its center.

Since then, tensions between Musk and Altman have escalated, culminating last week in OpenAI’s board rejecting a Musk-led bid to acquire the company for nearly $100 billion.