X is testing a free version of its Grok AI chatbot that doesn’t need a blue-tick subscription

Over the weekend various users of X noticed that they were being offered a free-tier version of Grok, X’s AI chatbot, to try. The free version comes with some limitations, however.

So far Grok has only been available on subscription, an approach that’s markedly different from other AI generators like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s MetaAI and Google Gemini, which offer a free tier that has fewer features than the paid-for version. Similarly, Apple Intelligence is still yet to roll out completely, but will remain free for its first few years at least.

X user @lohansimpson posted a screenshot of the Grok invite and wrote, “Free Grok is coming(With limits)! It will be limited locations at first”.

Screenshots of the invitation to try Grok contain the text, “A free tier of Grok is now available in your region. Chat, generate images and analyze photos. Limits apply.”

According to a researcher on X who has the user name swak, users on the Grok free tier will be limited to 10 Grok 2 questions every two hours and 20 Grok 2 mini questions every two hours. Grok 2 and Grok 2 mini are different LLMs that X offers. You will also be restricted to analyzing up to three images a day.

It’s not all good news for X users, because if those are the limitations on the free tier of Grok then it will be much more restricted than its competitors, like MetaAI.

Unrestricted images

Grok raised a lot of eyebrows, and quite a few questions, when Grok 2 was released in August this year containing the Flux image generator which had very few restrictions on its image-generation capabilities compared to other AI image generators.

While most AI image generators will stop short of letting you create images of politicians, celebrities, and copyrighted characters, like Superman or Iron Man, Grok seemed to be happy to let you create these type of images with abandon.

It’s not clear if the free version of Grok will have the same unrestricted access to the Flux image generator as the subscription service X currently offers, but a move to offer Grok to the wider X user base for free could dramatically increase the number of Grok users almost overnight, turning it into a real competitor to ChatGPT, Meta AI and Google Gemini.

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