Grok news

SpaceXSI (SpaceX Super Intelligence) has released version "1.0" of its AI agent "Grok Bot." Its official news post calls it "a major update to our AI teammates." The update adds "Team Bots," which let a team share the same bot; collaboration in Slack and Microsoft Teams; joining meetings on Google Meet, Zoom and Teams; proactive offers to take on work; and learning a team's preferences and decisions. Team Bots are available on the Team and Enterprise plans, and meetings on the Team, Enterprise and Ultra plans.

Elon Musk, who leads SpaceXSI (SpaceX Super Intelligence), posted on X on Nov. 10 that the next model, "Grok 4.8," has finished pretraining and entered the reinforcement learning stage. He said it will begin rolling out gradually to users of the AI agent "Grok Bot" later this week to see how it does. Asked how it compares with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, he replied that it is "not as good." As of the morning of Nov. 12, Grok 4.8 was not listed on the company's official website or in its developer documentation, and the latest official model remains Grok 4.7.

The official account of "Grok Bot," the AI agent of SpaceX subsidiary SpaceXAI (formerly xAI), announced on X on Nov. 4 (Nov. 5 Japan time) that a feature for making phone calls on users' behalf is now available. The feature was introduced by Elon Musk on Oct. 25, and in the promotional video, the bot gets the user's approval before dialing and the user can take over during the call. The post did not state which plans or countries are covered or whether the bot identifies itself as AI to the other party. According to a news report, the terms require it to identify itself as an assistant acting on the user's behalf, and it currently supports only U.S. numbers.

Game engine maker Unity on Nov. 3 posted a video on X introducing its official plugin for OpenAI's AI coding tool "Codex." Released in September, the plugin lets Codex choose and use on its own 31 kinds of task procedures (skills) written by Unity engineers. Unity has been extending the same skills to Anthropic's Claude Code, xAI's Grok Build, Google's Antigravity and GitHub Copilot CLI. The plugin does not connect directly to a running Unity Editor, and the version is at the beta stage. Unity will report July-September results on Nov. 5.

A video introducing new features of "Grok Bot," the AI agent from SpaceXAI (formerly xAI), was posted on X on Nov. 2, and Elon Musk also shared it as "Grok Bot improvements." It shows search results as product cards with photos and prices, places orders from product pages and tracks deliveries. Payment methods such as Shop Pay can be used, and each purchase requires the user's approval. It also added sharing of login credentials for bots used by teams and approval of connections through Slack.

Elon Musk, who leads SpaceXAI (formerly xAI), posted on X on Oct. 30 that the next model, "Grok 4.8," is taking longer than expected but will not disappoint. He said the model is not being tuned to benchmark scores and that the focus is on real-world usefulness. Grok 4.8 is believed to be the 2.5 trillion-parameter model he said would finish training in September, but he did not give a release date.

Elon Musk, who leads SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) under SpaceX, said on X on Oct. 25 that the AI agent "Grok Bot" can now call people and businesses on users' behalf. The bot states the user's request, takes notes on the other party's replies and sends a summary of the conversation. However, he did not disclose which plans or countries are eligible, what number is shown to the person receiving the call, or whether the bot identifies itself as an AI. Meta has also released an agent with a similar feature.

"Grok Bot," the AI agent developed by SpaceX subsidiary SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) and U.S.-based Cursor, added 6 features from Oct. 21 to 23. They are "Pages," in which the bot creates reports and dashboards and keeps them updated; sign-in on the user's behalf using the password manager 1Password; operation of phone apps such as the calendar and contacts; saving of logins and cards; video generation; and voice input that shows text as the user speaks. There is no setting that requires approval for each payment made with a saved card.

Matt Palmer, who works on "Grok Bot," the AI agent from SpaceX subsidiary SpaceXAI (formerly xAI), presented 12 updates to the bot in a video on Oct. 20. The bot can now read and reply to direct messages (DMs) on X, and it handles requests when called with "@bot" in an X post. On Android it can be set as the default assistant, and work on the bot's computer has become about three times faster on average. The company did not say whether DM replies require approval each time.

"Grok Bot," the AI agent from SpaceXAI (formerly xAI), a SpaceX subsidiary, became assignable to the "Action button" on the side of the iPhone on Oct. 19. Pressing the button starts a voice conversation with the Bot, like a phone call. It works on iPhone 15 Pro and later models, which have the Action button. Grok Bot gives each user a computer in the cloud and keeps working after a conversation ends, and it competes with OpenAI's always-on agent "dots."

Elon Musk, who leads SpaceX subsidiary SpaceXAI (formerly xAI), posted on X on Nov. 1 (Nov. 2 Japan time) that the cost of serving "Grok Bot," an AI agent that carries out work on users' behalf, was unsustainably high relative to revenue. He was replying to a user who asked for a reset after their weekly allowance ran out with several days left. He did not say how the limits had been changed, and the size of the allowance has not been disclosed. Two weeks earlier, at an earnings call, the company said paid weekly users had reached 800,000. In the same week, OpenAI and Anthropic expanded the limits on their paid plans.

A new category, "cyber," that permits offensive and defensive security content has appeared in the definitions of the developer API for xAI's conversational AI "Grok." An X account that automatically tracks AI changes posted about it on Nov. 1. It reportedly works only with API keys that xAI has enabled, while other keys get a permission error. OpenAI, Google and Anthropic offer less restricted models only to vetted defensive organizations, and xAI may be preparing the same approach. xAI has made no announcement, and the eligibility and conditions are unknown.