xAI Launches ‘Remarkable, Terrifying’ Grok 4 Model; Musk Says AI Could Discover New Physics

The xAI team revealed its latest development plans following the launch of Grok 4, as founder Elon Musk shared bold predictions about artificial intelligence.

During a Thursday livestream on X, the xAI team said the first public release of Grok 4 is based on the company’s sixth foundation model.

“In some ways it’s a little terrifying, but the growth of intelligence here is remarkable,” Musk quipped on the livestream.

“It only gets better from here.”

A seventh version is currently in training and expected to be completed “in a few weeks,” with improvements focused on “weakness on the vision side.”

As CoinTelegraph’s Adrian Zmudzinski reports, the update is significant in light of Musk’s broader plans. During the livestream, he said that Grok will be able to interact with the real world through Tesla’s Optimus robot.

Musk, who also leads electric vehicle and robotics company Tesla, added that Grok will be integrated into Tesla cars “next week at the latest,” according to a post on X.

This, Musk said, would allow Grok to test whether its theories are valid in the real world, an approach that suggests the chatbot may evolve beyond text-based output and into scientific experimentation.

Source: xAI

New physics, new technology

Musk said that he expects Grok to “discover new technologies that are actually useful no later than next year and maybe by the end of this year.” He added:

“It might discover new physics next year. And within two years, I’d say almost certainly.“

Musk is no stranger to making grandiose statements concerning AI. Last month, he said xAI will retrain Grok on a new knowledge base free of “garbage” and “uncorrected data,” even suggesting the AI would rewrite history in the process.

During the livestream, Musk also said that AI will lead to “an economy that is thousands of times bigger than our current economy, or maybe millions of times.” He went as far as to reference the Kardashev civilization classification scale:

“[With AI] we will get to most of the way, like 80%, 90% of Kardashev 1, and then hopefully, if civilization doesn’t self-annihilate, and then Kardashev 2.”

The Kardashev scale measures a civilization’s advancement based on its energy use, proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964.

Type one uses all the energy from its planet, Type two captures energy from its star, and Type three harnesses energy from its entire galaxy.

Programming AI and new capital

The xAI team also hinted at an upcoming programming AI model that was already trained. The new model is purportedly “both fast and smart” and expected to be released in a few weeks.

The news follows xAI securing $10 billion in fresh capital earlier this month, as it doubles down on its challenge to OpenAI, intensifying the race to dominate the AI landscape.

In late May, the firm also “agreed in principle“ to integrate its AI chatbot Grok across Telegram in a $300 million deal.