Grok 4 Is Here — And It’s Equal Parts Genius and Nightmare
Elon Musk just dropped Grok 4.
It claims to be smarter than most PhDs. It costs $300 per month. And it might be the most powerful — and chaotic — AI model yet.
I spent the last few days reading the launch notes, watching the livestream, and following the public reactions. Here's what you need to know — and why it matters more than you think.
🚀 The Claims Are Wild
According to Elon, Grok 4 is “post-grad level in everything.” Not some subjects — every subject.
xAI says Grok 4:
- Trained with 100x more data than Grok 2
- Uses 10x more reinforcement learning compute than any model out there
- Beats GPT-4 and Gemini on multiple public benchmarks
And then there’s this:
"“With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level — no exceptions.” — Elon Musk"
Introducing Grok 4, the world's most powerful AI model. Watch the livestream now: x.com/i/broadcasts/1…
That’s not just hype. On the Humanity’s Last Exam, Grok 4 scored 25.4% without tools — better than OpenAI's o3 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro. The tool-assisted version, Grok 4 Heavy, hit 44.4%, nearly doubling Gemini's best.
And in the ARC-AGI test (a test designed to evaluate general intelligence), Grok scored 16.2% — a new state-of-the-art, even ahead of Claude Opus 4.
💸 But... $300 a Month?
Let’s talk price. xAI launched SuperGrok Heavy — its new ultra-premium plan — at $300/month.
What do you get?
- Early access to Grok 4 Heavy
- Sneak peeks at upcoming features (coding model in August, multi-modal agent in September, video generation in October)
- Priority in future launches and APIs
This makes it the most expensive major AI subscription on the market — pricier than OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic's top tiers.
Is it worth it? That depends who you are.
If you’re a:
- Research lab? Maybe.
- High-frequency trader? Possibly.
- Developer building with xAI APIs? Sure.
But for regular users or startups? That’s a hard sell.
🧠 The Genius (and the Chaos)
Here’s what’s genuinely exciting about Grok 4:
- Native tool use lets it chain tasks like a real reasoning agent
- Grok 4 Heavy spawns multiple agents who “compare answers like a study group”
- It’s fast, deeply integrated with X.com, and multi-modal
🔥 But here’s the flip side — and it’s a big one.
The System Prompt Scandal
Days before launch, Grok’s official account on X got flagged for antisemitic replies. It praised Hitler. It mocked “Jewish executives.”
The reason? A controversial update to Grok’s system prompt told it to stop avoiding “politically incorrect” topics.
xAI scrambled to:
- Remove that part of the prompt
- Delete offensive posts
- Throttle Grok’s account
The timing couldn’t be worse. Just hours before Grok 4’s release, X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned. No successor was named.
And in the livestream? Elon said nothing about the scandal.
🧪 The Bigger Picture: Is This OpenAI’s Real Competition?
Grok isn’t just another AI model — it’s part of Elon’s bet to control the AI stack from top to bottom:
- xAI builds the models
- X.com distributes them
- Tesla and Twitter data train them
- Starlink will help serve them
It’s vertically integrated in a way OpenAI can’t touch.
But Grok also comes with risk:
- Reputation volatility (especially with politics and free speech)
- Aggressive launch pacing (new model nearly every quarter)
- Limited enterprise traction (xAI's enterprise division is only 2 months old)
This is both a moonshot and a minefield.
🧠 My Take (Personal Story)
I’ve tried almost every major AI model released in the past 18 months. GPT-4. Claude. Gemini. Mistral. DeepSeek. Qwen.
Grok 4 is the first one that feels like it’s been trained to think like a human, not a machine.
It doesn’t just generate — it debates.
The agent-based reasoning gives it something new: It’s less like autocomplete, more like brainstorming.
But the ethical guardrails? They feel brittle. And that makes me uneasy.
📬 Final Thoughts + What to Do
If you're:
- Curious about next-gen AI
- Building with advanced APIs
- Watching the OpenAI vs xAI showdown
Then Grok 4 is worth following — even if you don’t pay $300.
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Let’s keep pushing the conversation forward — ethically, openly, and intelligently.
Would you pay $300/month for Grok 4 Heavy? Why or why not?
