Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has introduced an API for its flagship AI model, Grok 3, despite facing a countersuit from OpenAI. This new release makes Grok 3, an AI model designed to rival OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini, available for broader use. Grok 3 can analyze images and respond to questions, and it powers several features on Musk’s social network, X, which was acquired by xAI in March.
xAI offers two versions of Grok 3 through its API: the full Grok 3 model and a smaller Grok 3 Mini with reasoning capabilities.
- Grok 3: Priced at $3 per million input tokens (~750,000 words) and $15 per million output tokens.
- Grok 3 Mini: Priced at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens.
Premium versions are available for faster processing at a higher cost.
Competitive Landscape
While Grok 3’s pricing is competitive with Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet, it is pricier than Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, which performs better in many AI benchmarks. Additionally, users have pointed out that Grok 3’s API offers a smaller context window than initially claimed, which could be a limitation for some developers.
When Musk first introduced Grok, he envisioned it as an unfiltered model, unafraid to tackle controversial issues. While Grok has followed through on this promise, including using colorful language when prompted, previous versions still showed political biases. Musk attributed this to the model’s training data and has stated his intention to make Grok more politically neutral. However, it remains uncertain if Grok 3 has fully achieved this balance, given past issues, such as censoring mentions of Trump.
What The Author Thinks
As xAI pushes forward with Grok 3, the model’s pricing and performance could make it a viable option for developers seeking a more affordable AI tool. However, the challenges around its political neutrality and the lack of clear advantages over competitors like Google’s Gemini may limit its adoption. The path forward for Grok 3 will depend on whether xAI can resolve these issues and carve out a stronger, more trusted position in the AI market.
Featured image credit: Built In
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