Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes KEY TAKEAWAYS Elon Musk's xAI updated its Grok chatbot, claiming it surpasses rivals like ChatGPT4. Grok3 reportedly excels in mathematics, science, and coding, aided by the Colossus supercomputer. SALT LAKE CITY — Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI announced an update to its artificial intelligence chatbot Tuesday along with claims that tests in key computing areas reflect the beta version of Grok3 is already outperforming competitors in key areas. In a video posted to X marking Grok3's unveiling, Musk said the development of Grok, named after a term coined by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, is motivated by the pursuit of knowledge. "The mission of xAI and Grok is to understand the universe," Musk said. "We're driven by curiosity about the nature of the universe and that's also what causes us to be a maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct." The initial Grok chatbot launched in November 2023 and xAI has released regular updates and improvements to its large language model, a type of artificial intelligence that is trained on massive data sets and can emulate human-like responses to inquiries. Musk and a trio of xAI engineers discussed Grok3's performance in the video presentation and showed charts and graphs they said were reflections of their new AI engine outperforming artificial intelligence tools from competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT4, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude and a new entrant to cutting edge AI platforms, the China-developed DeepSeek. How did Grok3 perform? The charts showed Grok3 edging out competitors in benchmark tests for mathematics, science and computer coding. Musk and his team also performed live demos of Grok3 in action, asking the chatbot to write code for a new game that combined traits of Tetris and Bejeweled as well as coding an animated representation of the path of a spaceflight from Earth to Mars and back again. Both tasks were purportedly completed in just minutes and results were shown during the presentation. Musk said Grok3 is "an order of magnitude" more capable than Grok2, which had a public release last August. And xAI says Grok3's speedy development was aided by its Colossus supercomputer, a massive data processing facility built in a former Electrolux factory in Memphis, Tennessee, that initially was running 100,000 NVIDIA processors that was later expanded to 200,000. The startup says the facility is the largest AI supercomputer in the world. Grok3 rolled out to premium subscribers to Musk's social media platform, X, on Tuesday, according to xAI and will soon be available via subscription on the web-based version of the chatbot, as well as an update to the Grok smartphone app. Musk said while the early iteration of Grok3 may be a bit error prone, the platform is improving on a daily basis. "It's kind of a beta," Musk said. "You should expect some imperfections at first. But we'll improve it rapidly … almost every day it will get better." Musk also said a Grok3 voice-interaction feature that allows users to make inquiries "like you're talking to a person" is about a week away from becoming available. What's going on between Musk and OpenAI? While Musk works to advance his own advanced AI software, he has also been engaged in an open feud with AI innovation leader OpenAI, a startup he helped launch in 2015. Musk parted ways with company leadership in 2018 when he resigned from the OpenAI board, but continued his investment activity until 2020. Musk has reported his total investment in OpenAI as $45 million. Musk has pilloried OpenAI on social media, filed a lawsuit against the company and, last week, led a consortium of investors in making an unsolicited $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, a move many see as an extension of the acrimony between Musk and OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman. Altman was quick to share his feelings about Musk's buyout offer in a response posted to X. "No thank you," Altman posted on X. "But we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." Musk has also criticized the Stargate Project, a $500 billion privately funded artificial intelligence infrastructure project unveiled by President Donald Trump at a January press event shortly after taking office. OpenAI is among the leaders of the Stargate effort along with U.S. tech giant Oracle and Japanese investment firm SoftBank Group. Musk himself is now a member of the president's inner circle after reportedly contributing over $270 million to Trump's reelection effort and accepting an appointment to run the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. × The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written. Most recent Artificial Intelligence stories