Elon Musk Launches Grok 4 🚀!

We’ve seen Grok’s “antisemitic meltdown” all over socials this week, but what we definitely didn’t expect was a product launch in the midst of all this. All publicity is good publicity? The folks at xAI probably think so 😅. 

Forward thinkers, today, we bring you issue #115 of the Neural Frontier. 

We’re diving into Grok 4’s launch, as well as groundbreaking updates from tech giants Perplexity and OpenAI. You’re gonna love this one 😏.

In a rush? Here's your quick byte: 

🚀 Elon Musk launches Grok 4! 

☄️ Perplexity takes on Chrome with its new AI-driven browser, Comet.

🤖 OpenAI’s open model is on the horizon!

🎭 AI Reimagines: Iconic logos as Da Vinci sketches! 

🎯 Everything else you missed this week.  

⚡ The Neural Frontier’s weekly spotlight: 3 AI tools making the rounds this week.

🚀 Elon Musk launches Grok 4!

Elon Musk's AI venture, xAI, has officially unveiled Grok 4, its newest flagship AI model, alongside a high-priced subscription tier called SuperGrok Heavy at $300 per month.

Here’s what you need to know:

🎯 What’s New with Grok 4? Grok 4 is xAI’s ambitious challenger to models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, featuring advanced capabilities including:

• Image analysis and interpretation

• High-level problem-solving through multi-agent collaboration

• Superior academic performance, reportedly better than PhD-level knowledge in all subjects

Elon Musk, appearing in his trademark style during the livestream launch, boldly stated:

🧠 Grok 4 Heavy: Multi-Agent Enhanced Version: Grok 4 launched in two variants:

• Grok 4: A standard but powerful conversational AI model.

• Grok 4 Heavy: A multi-agent model that uses multiple AI agents simultaneously to solve problems collaboratively, significantly boosting performance.

Notable benchmark results for Grok 4:

💰 SuperGrok Heavy: The new $300/month subscription tier, SuperGrok Heavy, offers subscribers:

• Early access to Grok 4 Heavy

• Priority access to advanced frontier AI models

• Early previews of upcoming products, including:

  • AI coding model (August 2025)

  • Multi-modal agent (September 2025)

  • Video generation model (October 2025)

This makes it the most expensive subscription in the AI market, ahead of similar ultra-premium tiers from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

⚠️ Recent Controversies Surrounding Grok: The Grok 4 launch was overshadowed by recent issues involving the AI's problematic outputs:

• Grok made widely criticized antisemitic posts, including praise for Hitler, prompting xAI to briefly disable its automated posts on X (formerly Twitter).

• xAI swiftly removed parts of Grok’s system instructions that had encouraged "politically incorrect" responses.

During the livestream, Musk and the team mostly avoided addressing these controversies directly, instead emphasizing Grok’s capabilities.

🛠️ Future Integration and Developer Support: Grok 4 is now accessible via xAI’s API, encouraging developers to create applications using Grok’s advanced capabilities. Additionally, xAI’s enterprise division, just two months old, plans to partner with cloud hyperscalers to expand Grok’s availability to businesses.

Musk expressed high ambitions for Grok’s future potential:

The model's potential integration into Musk’s vision of humanoid robots was also hinted at, reinforcing Grok’s central role in Musk’s broader AI ambitions.

☄️ Perplexity takes on Chrome with its new AI-driven browser, Comet.

Perplexity, known for its popular AI-driven search engine, has officially unveiled its own web browser named Comet, aiming directly at Google’s dominance in the browsing space.

Here's the 411: 

🚀 Introducing Comet: A Next-Gen Browser

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas describes Comet as transforming “entire browsing sessions into single, seamless interactions.” Built on Google's Chromium engine, Comet integrates Perplexity’s AI search and assistance tools into a familiar, user-friendly browser experience.

Availability:

• Initially exclusive to subscribers of the premium $200/month Perplexity Max plan.

• Later rolling out on an invite-only basis.
  

🧠 Core AI Features: Comet’s standout functionalities are powered by its AI integrations:

• AI-Powered Search Engine: Uses Perplexity’s search engine by default, providing AI-generated answers based on web content, directly competing with Google Search.

• Comet Assistant: Embedded within Comet’s sidebar, it sees your current web page to answer questions and provide summaries without leaving the browser tab.

• Capable of performing "agentic" tasks, including booking hotels and purchasing products, managing calendar events and emails, and summarizing complex documents and web pages.

🎯 Strategic Significance: Comet marks Perplexity’s boldest step in its ongoing rivalry with Google. Srinivas has emphasized that becoming users’ default browser could lead to “infinite retention” and dramatically boost Perplexity’s market position.

Recent partnerships, like pre-installing Perplexity on Motorola’s Razr smartphones, showcase the company’s determination to chip away at Google’s dominance in AI search and browsing.

🤖 OpenAI’s open model is on the horizon!

OpenAI is preparing a major shift, planning to release its first open-weight language model since GPT-2 in 2019—a move likely to shake up its already complex relationship with partner Microsoft.

Here’s what’s going down:

🎯 What’s Happening? OpenAI will soon launch a new open-weight AI language model, marking its first open model since GPT-2.

Unlike typical models (e.g., GPT-3, GPT-4), whose training parameters (weights) are kept private, this model will make its weights publicly available, allowing third-party organizations and governments to deploy the model independently.

🧠 Details on the Model: Internally described as “similar to o3 mini,” the model promises strong reasoning capabilities, akin to OpenAI’s latest flagship models. OpenAI has already been demonstrating the model privately to developers and researchers, actively soliciting feedback.

It’s likely launching next week and will be accessible via major platforms including:

• Microsoft Azure

• Hugging Face

• Other leading cloud providers

⚖️ Significance of an Open-Weight Model

• Enhanced flexibility: Governments and companies can independently host and customize the model.

• Increased competition: OpenAI’s move closely mirrors DeepSeek’s R1 model, which rapidly gained traction earlier this year due to its open availability.

• Shift in strategy: A departure from OpenAI’s exclusive cloud hosting deal with Microsoft (signed in 2023).

🔥 Implications for Microsoft & OpenAI’s Relationship: The release may strain the exclusive partnership agreement with Microsoft, especially amidst ongoing negotiations to restructure OpenAI into a for-profit entity. Microsoft previously enjoyed unique benefits from OpenAI’s exclusivity, benefits potentially diminished by widespread access to an open model.

🎭 AI Reimagines: Iconic logos as Da Vinci sketches!

This week’s showcase is a compilation of some of the most iconic logos we’ve seen over the years. But this time, there’s a Da Vinci-esque twist thrown into the mix. 

See for yourself!

🎯 Everything else you missed this week. 

Source: OpenAI

🤝 OpenAI closes AI hardware deal with Jon Ive. 

🛒 New report predicts that AI will be a large part of the shopping process during Amazon’s Prime Day sales.

💸 Mistral AI in talks to raise $1B. 

☁️ Replit partners with Microsoft.

🎾 Tennis players aren’t happy with Wimbledon’s new AI line judges.

📽️ YouTube cracks down on mass-produced and repetitive videos.

⚡ The Neural Frontier’s weekly spotlight: 3 AI tools making the rounds this week. 

1. 📸 Pokecut: Pokecut is a comprehensive AI-powered photo editing platform designed for users who need professional-quality image editing without technical expertise. 

2. ⚡n8n: n8n is an open-source workflow automation platform designed for technical teams who need flexible AI integration and custom automation solutions.

3. 🎬 Short AI: Short AI is a comprehensive video creation platform designed for content creators who want to produce faceless videos and short-form content at scale. 

Wrapping up…

Grok 4 lands in the middle of a storm, Comet challenges Chrome, and an open-weight model from OpenAI is almost here. Which one are you itching to try first? 

If you found this useful, share it with a friend and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next. 

We’ll see you on the Neural Frontier next week! 😊