February 23, 2025 – Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has launched its latest flagship AI model, Grok 3, unveiling new capabilities for its Grok iOS and web applications.
Grok 3, positioned as a competitor to OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini, offers enhanced reasoning capabilities and image analysis, further integrating with Musk’s social network, X.
Grok 3: enhanced AI capabilities
Grok 3 has been in development for months and was initially slated for release in 2024 but experienced delays. The model was trained using an enormous data center in Memphis containing approximately 200,000 GPUs. According to Musk, the new model was developed with “10x” more computing power than its predecessor, Grok 2, leveraging a more extensive training dataset, including legal filings.
“Grok 3 is an order of magnitude more capable than Grok 2,” Musk stated during a live-streamed presentation. “[It’s a] maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”
Grok 3 model variants and features
The Grok 3 family includes multiple versions:
Grok 3 mini: Offers faster response times at the cost of some accuracy.
Grok 3 Reasoning & Grok 3 mini Reasoning: Designed to carefully “think through” problems, similar to OpenAI’s o3-mini and DeepSeek’s R1. These models aim to fact-check themselves before responding, improving accuracy.
Grok 3 is currently rolling out in phases, with some features still in beta. The new models reportedly outperform GPT-4o in AI benchmarks such as AIME (mathematics performance) and GPQA (graduate-level science questions). Additionally, xAI claims that Grok 3 Reasoning surpasses OpenAI’s o3-mini-high in mathematics assessments, including AIME 2025.
New capabilities: DeepSearch and Reasoning enhancements
The reasoning models power DeepSearch, xAI’s AI-powered research tool, which scans the internet and X to generate detailed abstracts in response to user queries. Users can activate Grok 3’s enhanced reasoning through:
“Think” mode: For complex questions requiring deeper analysis.
“Big Brain” mode: A high-compute setting designed for advanced problem-solving.
To prevent unauthorized knowledge extraction, xAI has partially obscured the reasoning models’ thought processes in the Grok app. This measure follows recent controversies, such as DeepSeek’s alleged distillation of OpenAI models.
Subscription tiers and upcoming features
Grok 3 will first be available to X Premium+ subscribers ($22/month), while advanced features will require a new SuperGrok plan, reportedly priced at $30/month or $300/year. This premium tier grants additional reasoning queries, DeepSearch access, and unlimited image generation.
Upcoming enhancements include:
Voice Mode (within a week): A synthesized voice for Grok models.
Enterprise API Access (within weeks): xAI will offer Grok 3 and DeepSearch via API for business integration.
Future Open-Source plans and political neutrality pledge
Musk announced that xAI intends to open-source Grok 2 in the coming months, following a pattern where previous models are made public once new versions become stable.
“When Grok 3 is mature and stable, which is probably within a few months, then we’ll open-source Grok 2,” Musk confirmed.
Grok was initially marketed as an “edgy” and “unfiltered” AI model that could answer controversial questions other models avoided. However, past versions hedged on political topics, with one study suggesting a left-leaning bias on issues such as transgender rights and diversity programs. Musk has attributed this to training data limitations and has pledged to shift Grok toward greater political neutrality. Whether xAI has achieved this goal remains unclear, but the company continues to push boundaries in AI development.
As Grok 3 rolls out, its real-world performance and reception will determine its place in the competitive AI landscape.
China has lodged a formal diplomatic protest with the UK after British border officials allegedly subjected Chinese travellers to lengthy questioni...
Member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) prevented 273 terrorist attacks and more than 3,000 crimes linked to terrorism, separa...
More than 150 people have been killed in a drone strike on a crowded market in the disputed Abyei region, South Sudanese officials said, marking on...
U.S. President Donald Trump has criticised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for continuing to target Russia's energy infrastructure, while Russian strikes on Kyiv overnight killed at least one person and damaged a metro station.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Norway for talks about the Russia-Ukraine war. He is expected to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump's Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, who arrived in Oslo earlier. Witkoff will also meet European officials.
French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the violence, looting and vandalism that erupted during cost-of-living protests across France. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu held crisis talks on Monday, calling for partial curfews and raising the possibility of a state of emergency.
An oil tanker caught fire after striking a naval mine in the southern part of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy said late Sunday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said regional issues should be resolved through diplomacy and blamed the United States for insecurity and tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, speaking at a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday.
Japan has launched an uncrewed spacecraft on a mission to collect the first-ever samples from one of Mars’s moons and bring them back to Earth, in a bid to uncover clues about the origins of the solar system.
Satellite restrictions affecting Ukraine's military have put SpaceX's Starshield network under scrutiny, raising questions about who controls the technology and who can restrict its use during wartime.
More than three centuries after the dodo disappeared from Mauritius, efforts to bring the iconic bird back from extinction are taking a new step forward.
Hackers forced the temperature of fridges and freezers in hundreds of French supermarkets up to 50 degrees Celsius overnight, causing fires and food losses in what the Paris Prosecutor’s Office described as a “large-scale” attack.
A software engineer employed by OpenAI has been arrested and charged by U.S. authorities after investigators alleged he secretly placed a concealed recording device inside an executive conference room at the artificial intelligence company.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment