3 hours ago
2
ZDNET's key takeaways:
- Grok 4 is now accessible by default for unpaid xAI users
- Restrictions around the "limited" free access period are unclear.
- The move appears to be an effort to attract more paying users.
Elon Musk's AI start-up xAI has made its latest model, Grok 4, available to all users -- both paid and unpaid.
Grok now automatically opens in Auto mode for users of the chatbot's free tier, meaning the system automatically determines whether or not a given query needs Grok 4's advanced reasoning capabilities, or if a more limited model will be up to the job (a similar approach to what OpenAI's new GPT-5 model aims to do). Users can also manually select "Fast" mode, which generates responses more quickly using Grok 3, or "Expert" mode, which exclusively uses Grok 4, taking more time to come up with higher-quality responses.
Also: GPT-5 bombed my coding tests, but redeemed itself with code analysis
The company announced the "limited" release in an X post on Sunday, though it didn't specify the number of messages that unpaid users could exchange with the chatbot over a given time period or any other restrictions.
"For a limited time, we are rolling out generous usage limits so you can explore Grok 4's full potential," the post read.
Even Grok 4 itself was uncertain about the rules. "Exact limits for Grok-4's free tier are unclear, as xAI hasn't publicly detailed them, and they may vary by region or account type," the chatbot wrote when I asked about the limits of the free access period. "To be safe, expect around five to 10 messages per 12 hours with Grok-4 on the free tier, but you might hit the limit sooner if you use complex queries or during peak times."
When xAI unveiled Grok 4 last month, Musk described it as "the world's most powerful AI model," claiming it outperformed frontier models like Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI's 4o on several key benchmarks, including Humanity's Last Exam.
Also: How Google's Genie 3 could change AI video - and let you build your own interactive worlds
Subscriptions to Grok's subscription tiers, SuperGrok and SuperGrok Heavy, still cost $30 per month and $300 per month, respectively.
Covering the high costs of AI
By temporarily making Grok 4 available to all users, xAI appears to be angling in part to get its new model into the hands of as many people as possible -- a tactic ZDNET senior editor Sabrina Ortiz has been tracking. A percentage of those people may be impressed enough by the new model's abilities that, when they hit the limits of the free access window, they'll decide that it's worth upgrading to a paid subscription.
xAI also plans to introduce ads into Grok's responses to help pay for the high costs of running and refining the model, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
Also: You can try Gemini Live in your favorite Google apps now, and it blew me away
Musk announced in another X post Sunday that xAI users can now "long press" -- holding down on an icon for longer than just the usual quick tap of the thumb -- on any image to pull up an option to turn it into a video using AI. This could also ultimately be a play to draw in advertisers: Amazon recently debuted a similar AI-powered text-to-video feature.
Grok 4 vs. GPT-5
The temporary release of Grok 4 to unpaid users comes just days after OpenAI -- with whom Musk has long had a very public squabble -- released GPT-5 to all users at once, a new approach for the company.
Also: GPT-5 bombed my coding tests, but redeemed itself with code analysis
As of Monday, GPT-5 occupied the top spot in multiple critical categories (including text-generation, vision, and coding) on LMArena, an online platform where users can rate and compare the performance of large language models. OpenAI's o3 model also defeated Grok 4 in the final round of Google Game Arena's chess tournament last week. You can watch models duke it out here.
Grok 4, however, outperformed GPT-5 by a hair in the ARC-AGI-2 -- a test designed to gauge AI models' high-level reasoning capabilities -- though at a much higher cost ($2.17 per task versus $0.73 per task).
English (US) ·