Topline Elon Musk’s xAI launched Grok 4 on Wednesday night, the latest and most advanced version of its flagship artificial intelligence model, which the billionaire claimed was smarter than all its top rivals, a day after the company’s chatbot was mired in controversy over a series of antisemitic posts that praised Adolf Hitler. Musk claimed Grok 4 was the smartest AI in the world. Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Key Facts The company demoed the new Grok 4 model in a nearly hour-long live stream featuring Musk, who claimed, “This is the smartest AI in the world.” Musk and xAI staffers showed off results of Grok 4’s performance in various benchmarks, including “Humanity’s Last Exam,” and claimed it managed to outperform Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s o3 (high) models. The ‘Humanity’s Last Exam’ tests AI models on a set of 2,500 crowdsourced questions on a variety of subjects, including “mathematics, humanities, and the natural sciences,” and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro currently tops its official leaderboard. xAI launched two separate versions of the model on Wednesday—Grok 4 and the more powerful Grok 4 Heavy, which can be accessed through a monthly subscription of $30 and $300, respectively. What Did Musk Say About Grok 4’s Capabilities? The xAI owner made several sweeping claims about Grok 4’s capabilities during the live stream announcement. During the presentation, Musk said the AI model was “smarter than almost all graduate students, in all disciplines, simultaneously.” The billionaire also claimed it was the “smartest AI in the world” and added: “It really is remarkable to see the advancement of artificial intelligence and how quickly it is evolving…AI is advancing just vastly faster than any human.” Musk said if Grok 4 were to take the SATs, it would get a “perfect” score every time. “With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions,” Musk said, before adding that “it may lack common sense” at times. The billionaire also claimed he expects Grok to “discover new technologies that are actually useful no later than next year, and maybe end of this year…It might discover new physics next year.” In the past, Musk has floated ambitious timelines for many of his company's products like the Tesla Roadster, Cybertruck and Robotaxi, which have ended up facing multiple delays. Did Musk Address The Mechahitler Controversy? Musk did not address the controversy surrounding the Grok chatbot’s recent string of antisemitic posts, which also included praise for Hitler, during the presentation. While addressing the issue of AI safety, the billionaire said: “We need to make sure that the AI is a good AI, a good Grok. And the thing that I think is most important for AI safety...is to be maximally truth-seeking.” He then added “You can think of AI as this super genius child that ultimately will outsmart you, but you can instill the right values and encourage it to be...truthful, honorable, good things...the values you want to instill in a child that would ultimately grow up to be incredibly powerful.” Key Background The launch of the latest version of the new AI model comes a day after the Grok chatbot made several posts on X that included antisemitic remarks and praise for Nazis and Adolf Hitler. The bot claimed Musk “built me this way from the start,” and a “MechaHitler mode” was the chatbot’s “default setting for dropping red pills.” xAI eventually took down these posts and issued a statement saying it has “taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.” The company also appeared to have made adjustments to the system prompts that guide Grok’s responses, removing guidance added over the weekend that directed the chat to provide responses that do not “shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.” Further Reading