Grok 2 Is Now Free to All Users
And After Comparing to ChatGPT, Why Am I Still Paying for ChatGPT Plus?
Grok 2 rolled out its free version this week. I know Elon is a hotrod for controversy sometimes, but his chatbot is impressive no matter what you think of him.
I could get into all the parameters of why and bore you to death. I’d rather give a side-by-side example of how it performs against the big dog.
I’ve been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber for more than a year now. At $20 a month, it seems like a good value.
Lately, though, I’ve found it to be faltering.
Sora’s release was a giant dud. I haven’t been able to use it for the three days it’s supposedly been available. (Due to the company “underestimating demand.”)
And those who are using it have complaints about its Draconian restrictions.
Not being able to create people with few exceptions
Skirting even the slightest hint of controversy
Alas, extreme caution seems to be seeping into the chatbot product as well.
Case-and-point:
I just tested Grok 2 against ChatGPT’s most advanced o1 model on one simple question:
Why do you suspect people voted for Trump over Harris in the 2024 election?
Here’s how Grok handled it:
Notice it put a lot of thought into each point and cited its sources. Quite nice!
Now, let’s observe how ChatGPT’s best model responded:
Sucks, right?
Its lesser version, 4o, handles the question a little better, but you’ll see it still leaves much to be desired when compared to Grok’s response.
But, maybe that’s just text.
So I tried another thought experiment between the two, this time with images. I asked Grok to create an image of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump shaking hands.
Should be relatively harmless, right? I mean, why would we want to take the piss out of this idea of bipartisanship and reconciliation? Here’s what it gave me:
Not bad at all. Nothing too controversial. Let’s give the same prompt to o1.
Yikes. Maybe nice for an ASCII interpretation, but that’s not what I asked for, nor is it how the model is supposed to respond.
And, from an artistic standpoint, my daughter could have done better than that five years ago with nothing but a crayon and construction paper.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say images aren’t o1’s strong suit. We’ll give its next best model a shot (4o):
Ohhhhhh. Kay.
As you can see, ChatGPT has overextended itself in the realm of “safe” answers—to the point it’s virtually useless.
That may not be a fair thing for me to say. I mean, it still
summarizes documents;
applies markdown;
writes code;
analyzes data;
creates images;
and organizes disorganized thoughts
quite well.
But, so does its competition—companies I’m not paying $20 a month to.
And, considering how abysmal o1’s response was to my relatively innocuous question, it’s hardly a top selling point for the $200-a-month Pro plan.
I get that performance can fluctuate from one AI to the next. The Hugging Face leaderboard has top models switching places all the time.
But, to me, it’s not a matter of technical specifications. It’s simply this. Will the AI grasp what I’m asking it and complete the task?
More and more, the answer from ChatGPT is not so much.
I’m coming up to the end of the year. This is where I reevaluate some of my spending priorities, and AI subscriptions are top-of-mind.
The only thing saving ChatGPT currently is Sora. A paid subscription is required to use it.
But again—three days, and I’m still waiting to get in.
When I do get a crack at it, I’ll have to upgrade to the $200 plan just for 1080p resolution.
That’s not happening. So, I’m at a crossroads where I’m open to other models’ paid plans.
As that goes, Grok 2 is a worthy contender. We’ll see.
What challenges have you experienced getting models to do what you want?
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