Elon Musk's xAI releases latest flagship Grok 3

Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, unveiled its latest model, Grok 3, on Monday, introducing new features for its iOS and web apps. Grok, developed as a competitor to OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini, is capable of image analysis and answering questions.

After months of development, Grok 3 was delayed past its expected 2024 release.

Training took place at xAI's massive data center in Memphis, housing 200,000 GPUs. Musk claims Grok 3 utilized "10x" more computing power than its predecessor, Grok 2, and an expanded dataset, including court case documents. Musk describes Grok 3 as a significantly more capable, "maximally truth-seeking AI," even if the truth contradicts political correctness.

Grok 3 comes in different versions. A faster, smaller model, Grok 3 mini, sacrifices some accuracy for quicker responses. While not all models are available, the rollout started Monday. xAI asserts Grok 3 outperforms GPT-4o on benchmarks like AIME, which tests math problem-solving, and GPQA, which challenges AI with PhD-level questions in science. Grok 3 also performed well in the crowdsourced Chatbot Arena.

Two special versions, Grok 3 Reasoning and Grok 3 mini Reasoning, focus on problem-solving by thoroughly fact-checking answers, thus helping avoid common model errors. Ideal for complex math, science, and programming queries, these reasoning models are said to surpass even the best version of OpenAI's o3-mini on various benchmarks, including AIME 2025.

The Grok app will soon introduce a "voice mode," providing synthesized speech, followed by the launch of Grok 3 models in xAI's enterprise API and the DeepSearch feature. Musk also plans to open-source Grok 2 in a few months.

When Grok was first announced, Musk positioned it as an unfiltered, anti-"woke" AI, willing to answer controversial questions others avoid. The Grok models have lived up to this, offering responses that other AIs, like ChatGPT, may shy away from, including using bold or vulgar language when prompted.

(Cover: The user interface of the latest Grok 3. /VCG)