San Francisco: Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, unveiled its latest AI chatbot, Grok 3, on Monday, touting it as "scary smart" and claiming it has far superior capabilities compared to existing competitors in the market, including ChatGPT and China's DeepSeek. The new version is being positioned as a formidable player in the highly competitive AI sector.

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Musk, who has often described Grok 3 as “scary smart,” highlighted the significant advancements it offers over its predecessor, which was released in August 2024. The latest model boasts ten times the computational resources of the earlier version and is equipped with enhanced self-correction mechanisms designed to prevent the "hallucinations" that commonly plague other AI systems. These hallucinations refer to situations where chatbots generate false or misleading information.

Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai last week, Musk stated, “At times, I think Grok 3 is scary smart,” underscoring its superior reasoning abilities and performance in tests. “In the tests that we've done thus far, Grok 3 is outperforming anything that's been released, that we're aware of, so that's a good sign,” Musk added.

Despite the powerful capabilities of Grok 3, it faces fierce competition. The launch comes amid a global race to develop more advanced and cost-effective AI products. In particular, Chinese startup DeepSeek recently raised eyebrows with its launch of the R1 chatbot, a low-cost, high-quality model that poses a direct challenge to US AI ambitions.

Additionally, Grok 3 goes up against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the AI model that helped establish Musk’s former collaborator, Sam Altman, as a leading figure in the field. Musk and Altman were among the founding team of OpenAI in 2015, with Musk providing initial funding of $45 million. However, Musk left the company three years later, and the release of ChatGPT in 2022 has since shifted the AI landscape. The relationship between Musk and Altman has soured, with Musk recently attempting to buy OpenAI in a bid to regain control, only for his offer to be rejected.

The launch of Grok 3 also comes as Musk is deeply involved in US politics, particularly in his advisory role to President Donald Trump on artificial intelligence regulations. Critics have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest given Musk’s extensive commercial stake in AI, including his leadership of Tesla and SpaceX, along with his role in guiding AI policy in the US government.

According to Bloomberg, xAI has been canvassing potential investors for a roughly $10 billion funding round that would value the company at about $75 billion.

Musk, who also acts as boss of SpaceX and Tesla, launched the xAI company in July 2023, shortly after he signed an open letter calling for a pause in the development of powerful AI models.

(With inputs from AFP)