xAI introduces its coding agent called Grok Build
Key takeaways
- As Bloomberg notes, xAI has been trying to catch up to its rival companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.
- If you'll recall, it had been generating nonconsensual sexual images of real people instead of blocking users from doing so last year.
- xAI was acquired by Musk's other company, SpaceX, back in February.
It's called Grok Build, and it's still in its early beta version that's initially only available to Super Grok Heavy subscribers paying $300 per month for the service. x AI describes Grok Build as a "powerful new coding agent and CLI for professional software engineering and complex coding work." It says it will take user feedback from the early beta release to improve the product. SuperGrok Heavy users can install the beta from xAI's website and then log into their account to be able to access it.
As Bloomberg notes, xAI has been trying to catch up to its rival companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Elon Musk, the company's founder and CEO, previously admitted that it has fallen behind its competitors when it comes to coding. A couple of months ago, Musk said he was rebuilding xAI "from the foundations up" after several co-founders had left the company. One of the company's executives reportedly told staffers to work on getting Grok to match Claude's performance across various tasks.
Grok has somewhat of a spotty reputation. If you'll recall, it had been generating nonconsensual sexual images of real people instead of blocking users from doing so last year. According to a study by British nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published in January, Grok generated around 3 million sexualized images, 23,000 of which featured children. xAI had since changed its policies to prevent users from "editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis."