Look, I wouldn’t normally write about anything before noon, but my whiskey-addled brain caught wind of something that actually made me chuckle into my morning coffee (Irish, naturally). Elon Musk, the guy who bought Twitter for the GDP of a small nation and renamed it after a letter of the alphabet, is now playing bartender with his AI chatbot Grok.
Here’s the deal: They’re testing a free version of Grok in New Zealand. Why New Zealand? Hell if I know. Maybe the sheep there give better feedback than the rest of us. But the real entertainment is in the fine print.
You want to chat with Grok for free? Better pace yourself, friend. They’re limiting you to 10 queries every two hours with their fancy Grok-2 model. That’s like a bartender who counts your drinks and cuts you off after two beers. There’s also some diet version called Grok-2 mini that gives you 20 queries, but that’s probably like drinking light beer - what’s the point?
And get this - they’ll only let you analyze three images per day. I’ve seen more generous limits at last call in a Mormon wedding reception.
The whole thing reminds me of those “free drink” coupons that come with enough restrictions to make a lawyer’s head spin. First off, your account needs to be a week old - like some digital waiting period to make sure you’re not going to cause trouble. Plus, you need to link your phone number. Because apparently, Grok needs to know who to drunk-dial at 3 AM.
Now, Musk’s crew recently upgraded this digital drinking buddy with some fancy new tricks. Grok-2 can generate images now, thanks to something called FLUX.1 from Black Forest Labs. Sounds like a craft brewery trying too hard, if you ask me. They also taught it to understand images, which puts it slightly ahead of me after my sixth bourbon.
The funny part? This is all about keeping up with the AI Joneses - ChatGPT, Claude, and that new kid Gemini. It’s like watching bars compete for happy hour customers. “Our AI can generate better pictures!” Yeah, and the dive down the street claims they pour the strongest drinks in town.
But here’s what nobody’s talking about: This is classic Musk. Give away the first taste for free, get people hooked, then figure out how to monetize their digital dependency later. I’ve seen this game before - it’s as old as the “free” peanuts on the bar that make you thirsty for more beer.
The real question isn’t whether Grok is any good. The real question is what’s in it for Musk. More users mean more data, more testing, more tweaking of the algorithm. We’re all just lab rats in this experiment, but at least lab rats usually get cheese for their trouble.
And wouldn’t you know it - the test market is happening in the land of hobbits and rugby. If it works there, expect to see Grok stumbling into your digital neighborhood soon, asking if you want to be friends and promising it won’t spam your inbox (narrator: it will).
Bottom line? This is either going to be the next big thing in AI or another digital hangover waiting to happen. Either way, I’ll be here, watching it all unfold from behind my glass of Kentucky’s finest, taking notes and wondering if Grok can recommend a decent bourbon.
Until next time, this is Henry Chinaski, reminding you that in a world of artificial intelligence, there’s nothing artificial about a good whiskey.
– Nursing my headache at Cole’s, where the morning regulars know better than to attempt conversation