Grok Adds Voice Mode as Downloads Ramp Up

xAI’s latest Grok update seems to be going well, with downloads of the standalone Grok app rising 10X in the week following the launch of Grok 3, while daily active users of the app also jumped 5x week-over-week.

That’s according to the latest data from Sensor Tower (as first reported by TechCrunch), though the true usage trends will be more indicative after a few months, once the novelty of the launch has settled, and the utility of Grok’s functional updates are more evident.

xAI claims that its latest Grok 3 model is the most advanced AI system on the market, which it hopes will drive more people to sign up to X Premium in order to access its evolving AI tools. X is also offering a new SuperGrok access tier to utilize all of the system’s latest functions.

And the Grok updates are still coming, with X and xAI owner Elon Musk announcing that voice mode for Grok is now available to top-paying X Premium customers.

So now you can ask questions aloud to Grok, and have it respond by reading its responses via an AI-generated voice.

xAI recently noted that voice mode was one of the secondary elements it was working on for the Grok 3 release, and it’s now looking to make it available to users, adding another option for engaging with its AI chatbot.

Grok’s also got a new logo, which is seemingly one of several Grok logo variants floating around the app, but is now the main one displayed on the Grok profile on X.

And in combination with Elon’s government rationalization efforts, which could eventually see xAI integrated into government processes to maximize efficiency, the signs are looking positive for Elon’s AI ambitions.

Well, at least until Meta and OpenAI release new, more powerful models that blow Grok out of the water, that is.

Which has always been the confusing aspect of Elon’s AI efforts, that he’s going up against much more well-resourced, well-established players in the market, whose apps see much more usage than X.

Even with the Grok app’s growth, the overall interest in Grok has been fairly lukewarm. And with Meta recently reporting that its own AI chatbot now has 700 million monthly active users, more than X’s total audience, it’s still hard to see how xAI and Musk plan to keep Grok relevant and valuable in the longer term.

Again, the government integration push seems like the most viable pathway. Conflicting interests aside, it seems likely that Musk’s inside running, via his work with the new DOGE group, will give xAI an advantage in building an AI system that will assist in government agencies.

If Elon can build that connection, that xAI will secure ongoing funding, for the next four years at least, but outside of that, I’m not sure that there’s a heap of market demand for a “non-woke” AI chatbot, at least not to the level that xAI would need to build a sustainable business.

Also, smaller stories like this don’t help:

“Grok temporarily refused to respond with “sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation,” according to xAI’s head of engineering, Igor Babuschkin. After Grok users noticed that the chatbot had been given instructions to not respond with those results, Babuschkin blamed an unnamed, ex-OpenAI employee at xAI for updating Grok’s system prompt without approval.”

The fact that X is able to censor and weight its Grok model to benefit the image of its founder, and his political passion projects, seems like a significant concern, especially given Musk and X’s repeated criticism of everybody else for spreading lies and manipulating the truth.

xAI says that this was a simple error, that was quickly corrected. But taken in conjunction with X’s other censorship efforts, like silencing journalists at the behest of certain governments, removing checkmarks (and thus reach) from people who criticize Elon, and throttling the reach of links to publications that Musk himself doesn’t agree with, it certainly belies Musk’s public push for freedom of speech and open discussion.

That, no matter how you look at it, is not what X is about. And while the counter to this is that previous Twitter management was left-leaning, and that this is simply redressing the balance, a true redress of such is not the opposite, in suppressing views that don’t align with right-wing talking points.

Not that it seems to matter much to Elon’s supporters, who still take everything that he says at face value, and align with his view that free speech means being able to weight the scales in regards to what’s true and what’s not.

Altering Grok’s answers is just another example of this, which they’ll dismiss as an innocent mistake, while overlooking the fact that Musk is now doing this in all aspects.