Analysis: Musk's New Grok Move Is a 'Sign of Desperation'

Elon Musk just tightened the spigot on one of X's most visible features, and a critique at Futurism suggests the move says a lot about where his AI empire stands right now. The piece by Frank Landymore notes that Grok—the chatbot built by Musk's xAI—no longer answers questions posed by free users inside X posts. Instead, the once-ubiquitous "Ask Grok" tool now tells people that the bot is reserved for paying Premium and Premium+ subscribers, effectively paywalling what had become a defining part of the platform's post-Twitter identity.

"It's another sign of desperation from Musk," writes Landymore, who places the move in the context of a broader scramble: xAI has seen cofounders depart, faced blowback over Grok's political takes and offensive outputs, and fallen behind rivals in AI coding tools—one of the few areas where enterprise money is flowing. The tweak also comes as Musk folds xAI into SpaceX and positions the combined operation for a sky-high IPO valuation. Before that happens, Musk may be trying to clean up Grok's act. Read the full analysis. (Teenagers just brought suit against Grok.)