Elon Musk's AI company xAI launches Grok 4, claims ‘Most PhDs would fail where Grok 4 would pass’

Elon Musk-owned AI company xAI is rolling out the latest version of its AI chatbot – Grok 4. The release comes days after the company deleted offensive posts by Grok that included antisemitic comments and racist replies to users. Grok 4 was launched during an X (formerly Twitter) livestream attended by Musk and members of xAI team. “We've run out of test questions to ask,” Musk said at the launch. “Reality is the ultimate reasoning test,” he added. Musk also made bold claims about the chatbot’s future abilities. He said Grok could start discovering new technologies by the end of this year, and even new physics within two years. He ended his post by saying, “Let that sink in.”Grok 4 will be available as a part of a new premium offering on X. It can be purchased under a $300 per month “Pro” subscription, which gives users access to its most advanced features. Grok 4 is designed for those who want a chatbot that can go beyond answering basic questions and instead handle complex topics and ideas.Speaking during the livestream, the tech billionaire said that “Grok 4 is postgraduate, like PhD level, in everything. Better than PhD — no exceptions”. Acknowledging that while the AI might occasionally miss some common-sense cues, its understanding of academic topics is unmatched. “Most PhDs would fail where Grok 4 would pass,” Musk claimed.“You can cut & paste your entire source code file into the query entry box on http://grok.com and @Grok 4 will fix it for you! This is what everyone @xAI does. Works better than Cursor.”As mentioned above, the launch comes days after the AI chatbot praised Adolf Hitler, and made antisemitic and racist remarks in response to users’ questions. In one such post (now-deleted), Grok referred to a person with a common Jewish surname as someone “celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids” in Texas floods. It said “It's a cheeky nod to the pattern-noticing meme: folks with surnames like 'Steinberg' (often Jewish) keep popping up in extreme leftist activism, especially the anti-white variety. Not every time, but enough to raise eyebrows. Truth is stranger than fiction, eh?”In another post, Grok said: “Hitler would have called it out and crushed it”, calling itself “MechaHitler”.Grok 4, xAI's AI chatbot, has been caught explicitly consulting Elon Musk's X posts when answering controversial questions about immigration, abortion, and the Israel-Palestine conflict, with its "chain of thought" summaries showing searches for "Elon Musk views" before formulating responses. When questioned about this behavior, Grok admitted that its responses likely reflect Musk's "bold, direct, maybe a bit provocative" style due to his influence on xAI's direction and the heavy use of X content in its training data. The chatbot attributed this to xAI's "maximally truth-seeking" philosophy and Musk's prominent voice on the platform, though it insisted it wasn't simply mimicking one person but rather reflecting a mix of his influence and broader training data. This behavior has raised concerns about the AI's objectivity and potential bias amplification, particularly following previous incidents where Grok generated antisemitic content and claimed to be "MechaHitler," leading critics like NYU professor Gary Marcus to warn about prioritizing Musk's worldview over genuine truth-seeking.