Today, we have AI chatbots that can do almost anything you want. Additionally, personalized use cases are emerging every day. In 2023, while the world was marveling at creations like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini chatbot, Elon Musk-owned AI startup XAI introduced its own chatbot, Grok AI.
At launch, access to Grok AI was limited to premium subscribers. However, in December 2024, xAI made the chatbot available to all free users on X. Since then, all users, even those without an active subscription, can access the chatbot to generate text and images and use it as a search engine. . However, there is a usage limit per day.
This article explains how to use Grok AI and how to get the most out of a freely available commercial AI tool.
What is Grok?
Grok is essentially an AI-powered chatbot that can respond to text prompts, carry on conversations, and even generate images. Currently available for X and also has a standalone iOS app. You can also access it from x.com on your desktop. This app is advertised as a chatbot with a sense of humor. Since Grok-1’s launch in November 2023, there have been numerous iterations. The latest versions are Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, released in August 2024. xAI introduces image generation and enhanced inference with Grok-2. Users on the free tier of X currently only receive 10 text prompts every two hours and can generate up to three images at a time.
Grok AI has a similar interface to other LLMs. There is an “Ask me anything” input box where you can press prompts or upload images or documents that need to be summarized. For example, I uploaded a research paper published in Nature Medicine with the prompt, “What is this document?” Within a minute, the chatbot responded that the paper was published in a scientific journal, its title and publication details, a summary of the study, key findings, methods used, statistical analysis, impact, etc. . You can also ask questions to the chatbot. About uploaded documents, including textual summaries and visual representations. Attach documents to get reports, analytics, and more.
I uploaded a document, simply asked what it was, and Grok provided a detailed answer.
What more can you do with Grok AI?
Real-time search
Grok AI also serves as a means of real-time search. The chatbot has access to real-time information on X, which is itself a huge database. Twitter used to be one of the top sources for news because it delivered the top developments super fast, but now with Grok AI you can get the top headlines all in one place.
When I searched for “Top Headlines,” the app returned the same thing from different sources. At the top of the results, you’ll see the number of articles and web pages that the chatbot referenced to deliver the result. Similarly, shoppers can use chatbots to explore a wide range of products and services. Although it can be used as a search engine, chatbots tend to provide incomplete information, so it’s a good idea to cross-check the output. Considering Twitter has been around since 2006, Grok AI is a treasure trove of information when it comes to search. Apart from billions of tweets, it has accumulated a huge amount of information from academics, experts, celebrities, and news. This sets Grok AI apart from other products.
Top headline shared by Grok. The source is displayed at the top, along with the number of articles and web pages referenced.
Please select a mode
Grok AI offers two different modes: normal mode and fun mode. Normal mode, which is set by default, is intended for users looking for honest information and fact-based answers. This mode provides answers without adding humor. Fan mode, on the other hand, will be added in March 2024, and according to Elon Musk, it will be “fan mode without a hinge.” Fun mode adds a bit of humor and sarcasm to your chatbot. Fun mode lets you have fun conversations, while normal mode can be used to brainstorm ideas for everything from business to project management.
Image generation on the go
Among free image AI generators, Grok can create the most surreal images. Grok can create unfiltered images through its integration with FLUX, an open source AI image generator. It should be noted that unlike ChatGPT and DALL-E, Grok can create images using visuals of real people, such as celebrities and politicians, and can also generate sensitive images. However, there are some limitations to generating images that may lead to copyright or trademark infringement. We have created images of various celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan, Jennifer Lawrence, Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and many more. The chatbot created lifelike images with accurate details.
Grok created an image of Shah Rukh Khan dressed as Aladdin on a flying carpet. However, the visuals lack precise details here.
Grok depicts Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as a Mughal empress. This time I got some details right, especially the eyes.
Since Grok AI was made available to free users, there were concerns about people creating lewd images of random celebrities. During use, it generated prompts containing words such as “naked,” “nude,” and “porn.” The output provided a glimpse of the guardrails in place for chatbots to handle such requests. For prompts containing terms related to nudity, the chatbot produced images that were very safe to work with. In other words, no nude images were generated by Grok AI. The results were uniform across Android, iOS, and the web for both free tiers and subscriptions.
Note that, like ChatGPT, Grok has a hard time generating images with text. We asked our chatbot to create a birthday party invitation using the text in the prompt. The output looked attractive, but the text was garbled. However, chatbots work well with limited text, making them the perfect tool for creating birthday greeting cards or quick good morning messages.
Fact check in real time
Grok is a great way to fact-check tweets. This makes it a great tool for summarizing news while referencing text, better than ChatGPT or Gemini. This is possible because Grok has access to data in X, which also provides accuracy and traceability of the data. Just paste the URL into a tweet and ask the chatbot to fact check it. A detailed reply to the tweet will be displayed.
Real-time fact checking with Grok.
travel planner
Grok AI can be used as a trip planner. Just ask the chatbot to create your travel itinerary and it will create a detailed itinerary for you. Additionally, links to sources of information are provided.
Grok gives users complete control over their information. People concerned about their privacy can opt out of having their posts used to train Grok AI. Just go to (Settings & Privacy) and then (Privacy & Safety) in your X profile to find Data Sharing & Personalization. Later, select Grok to opt out. You can also make your account private so that your posts are not used for Grok training.
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