Is Musk's AI 'Grok' falling behind in the competition?

Is Musk's AI 'Grok' falling behind in the competition?

Monthly downloads plummet from 20 million to 8.3 million

Leasing data center to competitor Anthropic

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) model Grok is significantly lagging behind rapidly growing competing models, and a recent contract between SpaceX and Anthropic raises questions about whether Grok can catch up, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 11th (local time).

SpaceX, which merged with Grok's developer xAI, signed a contract on the 6th to lease the entire computing capacity of its 'Colossus1' data center in Memphis, Tennessee, to Anthropic.

Anthropic and OpenAI are competing to secure as much computing capacity as possible to meet surging demand. In particular, computing capacity was leased to Anthropic, a competitor that has been struggling to secure computing capacity.

Grok, launched two years ago, gained millions of users through its integration with Musk's social media X (formerly Twitter) and controversial explicit sexual content in its chat features, but its recent growth appears to be slowing.

According to analytics firm AppMagic, Grok's downloads peaked at over 20 million in January, then decreased to approximately 8.3 million in April.

According to a survey of 260,000 US AI users and workers by research firm Recon Analytics, the proportion of paid Grok users in the second quarter of this year was 0.174%, almost unchanged from a year ago (0.173%). In contrast, the proportion of paid ChatGPT users exceeded 6%.

Musk himself, testifying in court in a lawsuit against OpenAI late last month, described xAI as a "very small" and "the smallest of the AI companies."

Grok offered settings that allowed users to create provocative and suggestive content, and according to former employees, these settings increased user engagement.

Grok's download numbers reached their peak in January after an update that allowed users to virtually undress people in photos. The widespread use of this feature on photos of minors led to investigations by regulators and Congress, and the company eventually restricted access to the feature.

Grok is still lagging behind in the coding tool sector, where competition among AI companies is most intense.

According to Eric Bradley, research director at market research firm Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), Grok has seen little growth within corporate organizations. In contrast, the usage of Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini is surging.

In an ETR survey of approximately 500 people in March, 48% of respondents said they were using Claude in their company and planned to continue using it. This is a sharp increase from 21% a year ago.

40% of respondents said they were using Gemini and planned to continue using it, up from 27% a year ago. In contrast, only 7% of respondents said they were using Grok and planned to continue using it, a slight increase from 4% a year ago.