Until now, the social network X limited the AI chatbot Grok developed by Elon Musk's other company xAI, for its premium, paid members. The platform, though, appears to be working on a plan that makes the chatbot free.
App researchers and some users in the weekend reported free availability of Grok with regional access.

TechCrunch was able to confirm that X is, at least, testing access to Grok by free users from New Zealand.

According to the researcher who goes by Swak on X, there are limits for now: 10 queries per two hours with the Grok-2 model, 20 queries per two hours with the Grok-2 mini model, and three image analysis questions per day.

For free access to Grok, an account must be seven days old with a registered phone number.

xAI has recently released Grok-2, in August, completing image generation capacities, which are supported by the FLUX.1 model from Black Forest Labs. The company has also equipped the model with the ability to interpret images by the end of last month.

All these features were till now available only to Premium and Premium+ users. By opening Grok to free users, xAI possibly looks for a more significant userbase and faster feedback cycle for its products so that it can better compete with the other models already doing the rounds in the market like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

In April this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that xAI was in talks to raise several billion dollars at a valuation of $40 billion.