Elon Musk, longtime defender of open-source AI, is bringing advertising into his rogue Grok chatbot

The marketing push comes after Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI for its plan to launch a for-fit

Paid placement could raise questions the accuracy of the chatbot’s responses

Elon Musk is looking to monetize Grok

Speaking to advertisers in a discussion on X this week, Musk said advertisers would be permitted to pay to appear in suggestions from the Grok chatbot. “Our focus thus far has just been on making Grok the smartest, most accurate AI in the world and I think we’ve largely succeeded in that

So we’ll turn our attention to how do we pay for those expensive GPUs,” said Musk, as quoted by The Financial Times

The marketing push comes after Musk has repeatedly criticized (and filed legal action against) OpenAI for its plan to launch a for-fit

It also comes soon after Musk’s Grok AI launched a “spicy mode” that allows users to create deepfake s and images of both celebrities and private individuals, which can turn downright raunchy

It also raises questions the accuracy of responses

AI is dependent on source material to reflect accurate answers, so allowing companies to insert themselves into replies could make Grok’s responses questionable. “If a user’s trying to solve a blem [by asking Grok], then advertising the specific solution would be ideal at that point,” Musk said

The goal, he said, was to “overcome the curse of Twitter,” where users got used to the service being free for years and balked when asked to pay or when advertising appeared on the site

Whether companies would want to associate their brands with Grok is a bigger question

Last month, the chatbot made several anti-Semitic s, even referencing Hitler, when asked the Texas flooding. (The team says the issue has since been corrected.) Grok has even turned on Musk in the past

In January, when asked “Is Elon Musk a good person?,” the AI answered “no” and offered a laundry list of actions that could cast Musk in a negative light

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