Elon Musk’s social platform X and its AI chatbot Grok experienced outages Thursday afternoon, according to user reports. Issues began surfacing around 11 a.m. ET, with both services showing spikes in complaints.
Partial Recovery
X appeared to recover by around 1 p.m. ET, though some users continued to report problems. In many cases, the issues may have been tied more to Grok, which is deeply integrated into X, rather than the platform itself.
Users noted error messages citing Grok being “under a heavy load.” Frustration spilled onto X as people shared screenshots and posts about the disruptions. The timing comes shortly after Grok 4 was made available for free for a limited period, likely adding extra strain.
Author’s Opinion
Making Grok 4 free might have driven a surge of demand that the system wasn’t ready to handle. AI tools often gain popularity faster than infrastructure can catch up, and outages like this highlight the challenge of scaling responsibly. If Musk’s team wants Grok to be taken seriously against bigger AI competitors, reliability may matter as much as features.
Featured image credit: Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash
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