Grok-2 AI becomes free for all X users

xAI is starting to offer a new version of Grok-2 for free to all X users. The model is three times faster and improves accuracy, instruction following, and understanding of multiple languages.

The rollout begins on December 12, 2024, and will happen gradually. Premium and Premium+ accounts keep higher usage limits and will get priority access to future features.

Grok searches for answers inside and outside X

Grok can search X posts and pages across the rest of the internet through its web search feature. It also includes citations, so you can open the sources it used and check where an answer comes from.

This is useful when you need context about a news story, a trend, or an event happening in real time. The information may be more recent than what a model trained only on static data can provide, although the sources still need to be reviewed.

The integration with X also adds a Grok button to posts in the timeline. Its purpose is to help you understand a conversation, find relevant context, or explore a topic that is gaining attention.

Images, memes, and versions of yourself

Grok includes Aurora, xAI's image generation model. According to the company, Aurora improves the realism of images created through the chatbot, for both fictional photographs and memes.

The "draw me" feature lets you generate reinterpretations of yourself using information from your X profile. If you find someone else's "draw me" post, you can tap "Create your version with Grok" to create your own.

New models for developers

xAI is also updating its API, the service that lets you integrate Grok into your own applications. The new models are grok-2-1212 and grok-2-vision-1212, with improvements in accuracy, instruction following, and multilingual capabilities.

The price drops to:

• 2 dollars per million input tokens, meaning the text an application sends to the model.
• 10 dollars per million output tokens, which is the content Grok generates.

The API also offers 25 dollars in free credits to people who sign up. Aurora will arrive on this platform in the coming weeks, allowing developers to build applications capable of generating photorealistic images.

For you, the main change is that Grok is no longer limited to subscribers and is starting to become available at no cost to the entire X community. What matters now is seeing how it performs under much higher demand, and whether its searches and citations remain accurate when dealing with real-time information.