Grok-1.5: X.AI’s Latest Leap in AI Technology

Grok-1.5, Elon Musk’s AI venture, X.AI, unveils its latest generative AI model. This iteration is poised to enhance the Grok chatbot on social network X.

Elon Musk’s AI business, X.AI, has unveiled Grok-1.5, its most recent generative AI model. Grok-1.5, which is expected to power social network X’s Grok chatbot “in the coming days,” according to X.ai in a blog post, looks to be a quantifiable improvement over Grok-1, at least based on benchmark results and specs that X has released.

X.ai claims that Grok-1.5 benefits from “improved reasoning,” especially when it comes to coding and math-related tasks. On the widely used mathematics benchmark, MATH, the model outperforms Grok-1 by nearly two times, and it performs more than ten percentage points higher on the HumanEval test of programming language generation and problem-solving skills.

Naturally, it’s hard to forecast how those findings will manifest in real-world applications. Commonly used AI standards, which assess performance on esoteric tasks like graduate-level chemistry test questions, do not really reflect how the typical person interacts with models in the real world today, as we recently noted.

The amount of context that Grok-1.5 can take in compared to Grok-1 is one change that should result in noticeable increases.

Grok-1.5’s context consists of 128,000 tokens, which are discrete textual fragments such as “fan,” “tas,” and “tic.” Context, also known as the context window, is the set of input data (text in this case) that a model takes into account before producing output (additional text). Larger contexts help models avoid this problem and, as an added benefit, help them understand the flow of data they receive. Models with limited context windows have a tendency to forget the substance of even quite recent talks.

According to X.ai’s blog post, “[Grok-1.5] can utilize information from substantially longer documents.” Additionally, when the context window grows, the model can respond to longer and more complicated suggestions while still being able to follow instructions.

X.ai’s Grok models have distinguished themselves from other generative AI models in the past by answering queries regarding subjects such as conspiracies and more contentious political concepts that are normally off-limits to other models. Additionally, Musk has described the models’ responses to inquiries as having “a rebellious streak” and using overtly offensive words when asked.

What, if any, modifications Grok-1.5 makes in these areas is unknown. X.AI does not mention this in the blog post.

According to X.ai, early testers on X will soon have access to Grok-1.5, along with “several new features.” Musk has already made references to compiling discussion threads and responses and offering ideas for post content; we’ll see if things materialize quickly enough.

Following the open source release of Grok-1 by X.AI, but without the requisite code to improve or further train it, comes the introduction of Grok-1.5. Recently, Musk declared that more X users, particularly those subscribing to the $8/month Premium plan on X, would have access to Grok, the chatbot. Grok was previously exclusive to X Premium+ members, who pay $16/month.