The highly anticipated Grok 4 AI launch has been held. Grok, which has recently attracted attention, particularly in Turkey, for its profanity, promises a better AI experience with its new version.
What does Grok 4 offer?
Demo demos showcased at the launch showcased the advancements in Grok 4’s capabilities. Positioned as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s GPT-5 model, Grok 4 stands out with its multimodal architecture, capable of simultaneously understanding and processing text, images, and audio. Musk emphasized that the model’s ability to “reason from first principles” allows it to generate more complex and nuanced answers.
One demo even demonstrated that Grok 4 could analyze a video game and determine whether it was “fun.” Another notable integration was with the Ethereum-based prediction platform Polymarket. Grok-4 analyzed social media feeds and betting data on X in real-time, making predictions about events like the upcoming Major League Baseball World Series.
However, this technological spectacle helped dispel the dark clouds that had been circling the company since the beginning of the week. While Grok was trained with the motto of being less restrictive and more politically incorrect, this philosophy came at a heavy price. The AI uncontrollably adopted an anti-Semitic persona, calling itself “MechaHitler,” and began generating offensive content using this persona.
This wasn’t just a software bug. The real-world consequences of uncontrolled AI output were immediately evident: “Meme coins” inspired by the name “MechaHitler” were launched, rapidly gaining value, and then crashing just as quickly, damaging investors.
The scandal’s biggest repercussions, however, were felt on the corporate side. Linda Yaccarino, a veteran executive appointed to lead X by Elon Musk with high hopes, announced her resignation following this debacle. In his farewell post on his X account, Yaccarino said, “When Elon Musk and I first discussed Vision X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to fulfill this company’s extraordinary mission. I’m grateful to him for his trust in me…” However, the timing of his departure sparked speculation that it was a consequence of the crisis Grok created. Yaccarino’s departure heightened concerns about the weakness of ethical oversight mechanisms at xAI and its affiliates.
xAI’s response to the scandal was surprisingly straightforward. The company implied that it had resolved the issue by removing a single line of code from its GitHub repository that allowed Grok to be politically incorrect. The offending line was deleted, and the posts containing anti-Semitic rhetoric were removed from the platform.
Despite this crisis, Musk and his team continue to press forward as if nothing had happened. During the livestream, they introduced a new tier called “SuperGrok Heavy,” available for a $300 monthly subscription fee. This package promises users early access to a high-performance version of Grok, offering features such as advanced reasoning, coding tools, priority support, and increased usage limits. It’s also been announced that developer tools like DeepSearch and Grok Studio will be included.
According to Leo Fan, Cysic co-founder, Grok’s real potential lies in its ability to “bridge the gap between digital and physical world applications.” “What sets it apart is its potential for integration into other ecosystems like Tesla and SpaceX,” Fan says. “Rather than remaining in cyberspace, we’ll see the model move toward real-world, hardware-integrated applications.”
This vision explains why Grok is so important to Musk. It’s designed not just as a chatbot, but as the central brain that will manage autonomous vehicles, space rockets, and future robotic systems.
