Do you ever feel like your car isn’t calling you enough slurs or referring to itself as MechaHitler? Well, I’ve got some good news. Elon Musk says his Grok artificial intelligence chatbot, which was just reined in on X (the everything app) for saying too much racist stuff, is going to be deployed in Tesla vehicles “very soon.”
Musk posted on his social media site that Grok will appear in people’s Teslas “next week at the latest.” He made the announcement hours after presenting a new iteration of Grok via a livestream, according to Bloomberg. xAI — Musk’s company that built the chatbot — released Grok 4 about a day after removing racist, homophobic, antisemitic, and misogynistic posts made by the chatbot on X. The company says that after it was made aware of the content, it took action to ban hate speech from Grok before posting on X, according to Wired. This sounds like exactly what you need in your car, doesn’t it?
This isn’t a development that is totally out of left field, though. Musk has long talked about integrating xAI and Tesla. It’s actually something investors have been calling for to help reverse deeply slumped sales, Bloomberg reports. About a year ago, Musk polled folks on X as to whether or not Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI. 68% of voters said yes in the poll. Of course, you could just read this as Musk using the money from his successful company to prop up a struggling one, but that’s neither here nor there. After all, xAI has since merged with X in a deal that Musk said valued the AI company at $80 billion and the social media company at $33 billion.
X marks the spot
In April, Tesla said xAI was a source of revenue in 2024. That startup reportedly incurred about $198 million in expenses tied to commercial, consulting, and support agreements with the Austin, Texas-based automaker. The vast majority of those dealings — about $191 million — involved xAI buying Tesla’s utility-scale energy storage batteries, called the Megapack.
Right now, it’s not totally clear how conversational Grok will actually be in Teslas, according to Wired. We also don’t know if Tesla owners will have to pay for Grok access in their vehicles. The current version of the chatbot is indeed free to interact with on X, but users will have to pay $30 a month to access Grok 4 through the Grok website or app. That’s almost a deal (for fools) when you consider that access to a more capable version of the AI, known as Grok 4 Heavy, will cost users a whopping $300 per month.
I don’t know why you’d want Grok — and its penchant for saying horrific things — in your car, but all I can say is… Grok Tuah. I am so sorry.
