Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has debuted its updated Grok-3 model, showcasing a version of the chatbot technology to challenge OpenAI days after the billionaire's unsolicited cash bid to buy the company was rejected. The Grok-3 model has been trained on synthetic datasets using machine learning techniques such as reinforcement learning, which is said to be an effective method to reduce incorrect or imaginary responses provided by AI models, otherwise known as hallucinations. According to xAI, Grok-3 beats OpenAI's GPT-4o, Alphabet Inc.'s Google Gemini, DeepSeek's V3 model, and Anthropic's Claude in math, science, and coding benchmarks.

The Grok-3 model has "more than 10 times" the compute power of its predecessor and completed pre-training in early January, Musk said in a presentation alongside three xAI engineers. xAI also introduced a new smart search engine with Grok-3, calling it DeepSearch, which is a reasoning chatbot that expresses its process of understanding a query and how it plans its response. The company plans to release a voice-based chatbot and open-source preceding versions of Grok models as soon as the latest one is fully mature. Musk's team claims that Grok-3 is available to Premium+ subscribers on X, a service that costs $22 a month, compared to $200 a month for full access to OpenAI's GPT-4o.

The AI competition is heating up, with new models and funding rounds being announced regularly. OpenAI is in talks to raise as much as $40 billion in a round that would push its valuation to as much as $300 billion. xAI is also in talks to raise about $10 billion in a funding round that would value the company at roughly $75 billion. The company was last valued at about $51 billion, according to data compiled by PitchBook. Other AI powerhouses, such as DeepSeek, are also emerging, with their open-source models matching or beating leading US competitors on a range of industry benchmarks. The artificial intelligence market is becoming increasingly crowded, with new players entering the scene and existing ones expanding their offerings.

The technical specifications of the Grok-3 model include: * More than 10 times the compute power of its predecessor * Completed pre-training in early January * Trained on synthetic datasets using machine learning techniques such as reinforcement learning * Beats OpenAI's GPT-4o, Alphabet Inc.'s Google Gemini, DeepSeek's V3 model, and Anthropic's Claude in math, science, and coding benchmarks * Available to Premium+ subscribers on X, a service that costs $22 a month The features of the DeepSearch engine include: * A reasoning chatbot that expresses its process of understanding a query and how it plans its response * Options for research, brainstorming, and data analysis * A voice-based chatbot to be released at a later time The comparisons between Grok-3 and other AI models include: * Grok-3 vs OpenAI's GPT-4o: Grok-3 beats GPT-4o in math, science, and coding benchmarks * Grok-3 vs DeepSeek's V3 model: Grok-3 beats V3 model in math, science, and coding benchmarks * Grok-3 vs Anthropic's Claude: Grok-3 beats Claude in math, science, and coding benchmarks

The future of AI is looking increasingly competitive, with companies like xAI, OpenAI, and DeepSeek pushing the boundaries of what is possible with machine learning. As the AI market continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how these companies adapt and innovate to stay ahead of the curve. With the increasing demand for AI-powered solutions, the competition is likely to drive innovation and advancements in the field, leading to more sophisticated and capable AI models in the future.