Elon Musk has confirmed that the next major version of his AI chatbot, Grok, will be released shortly after July 4.

The announcement was made in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), where Musk said, “Grinding on @Grok all night with the @xAI team. Good progress. Will be called Grok 4. Release just after July 4th. Needs one more big run for a specialised coding model.”

The statement indicates that Grok 4 is currently in the final stages of development, with the team working intensely to fine-tune the system. Musk’s mention of a “specialised coding model” suggests that the new version will come with advanced capabilities aimed at developers and programmers.

Earlier, Grok produced inaccurate and contradictory responses when users sought to fact-check the Israel-Iran conflict, a study said, raising fresh doubts about its reliability as a debunking tool.

With tech platforms reducing their reliance on human fact-checkers, users are increasingly utilizing AI-powered chatbots -- including xAI's Grok -- in search of reliable information, but their responses are often themselves prone to misinformation.

"The investigation into Grok's performance during the first days of the Israel-Iran conflict exposes significant flaws and limitations in the AI chatbot's ability to provide accurate, reliable, and consistent information during times of crisis," said the study from the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council, an American think tank.

"Grok demonstrated that it struggles with verifying already-confirmed facts, analyzing fake visuals, and avoiding unsubstantiated claims."

The DFRLab analyzed around 130,000 posts in various languages on the platform X, where the AI assistant is built in, to find that Grok was "struggling to authenticate AI-generated media."

Following Iran's retaliatory strikes on Israel, Grok offered vastly different responses to similar prompts about an AI-generated video of a destroyed airport that amassed millions of views on X, the study found.

It oscillated -- sometimes within the same minute -- between denying the airport's destruction and confirming it had been damaged by strikes, the study said.

In some responses, Grok cited the a missile launched by Yemeni rebels as the source of the damage. In others, it wrongly identified the AI-generated airport as one in Beirut, Gaza, or Tehran.

When users shared another AI-generated video depicting buildings collapsing after an alleged Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, Grok responded that it appeared to be real, the study said.

(with inputs from AFP)