Elon Musk's xAI has announced the launch of Grok-3, its latest artificial intelligence model, which boasts "more than 10 times" the compute power of its predecessor. The new flagship model features advanced "Big Brain" reasoning capabilities, allowing it to answer more complex questions by breaking instructions down into smaller tasks and fact-checking itself before offering a solution.

According to xAI, Grok-3 outperforms rival models such as OpenAI's GPT-4o, Google's Gemini, and DeepSeek's V3 models in early testing. The company is also launching a Grok AI agent product called Deep Search, which it describes as a "next generation search engine."

The Grok-3 reasoning capabilities are available in two modes: "Think", which displays Grok's reasoning as it resolves requests, and "Big Brain" for complex tasks that require more computational power. xAI claims that Grok-3 is a "maximally truth-seeking AI — even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct."

This statement comes after previous versions of the xAI chatbot have been criticized for spreading election misinformation and having fewer guardrails on text-to-image generation, allowing it to produce questionable or offensive imagery. OpenAI is also exploring how to develop its models to "seek the truth" when handling controversial topics, but with the aim of maintaining certain safety rails.

The Grok-3 reasoning capabilities are only available to subscribers of X Premium Plus, which now starts at $40 per month. This is the second price hike for Premium Plus in two months, having increased from $16 to $22 in December. xAI is also launching a new subscription plan called SuperGrok, which will provide "the most advanced capabilities and earliest access to new features" for $30 per month, although it's unclear if this is an additional charge on top of X subscriptions.

Elon Musk also announced that the Grok chatbot will soon gain a synthesized voice feature that sounds similar to OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT. Additionally, xAI plans to make Grok-2 open source in the coming months.

The launch of Grok-3 marks a significant milestone in the development of artificial intelligence, with xAI positioning itself as a leader in the field. However, the hefty price hike for subscribers may raise concerns about accessibility and affordability. As the AI landscape continues to evolve, it remains to be seen how xAI's latest flagship model will impact the industry and its users.