Grok is reportedly testing a standalone iOS app
The chatbot wants to take on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, which are already on the iPhone.
It appears that Elon Musk has been working hard to get Grok into as many hands as possible recently. When his AI company, xAI first launched the AI chatbot, it was kept behind a paywall but this past week, the platform announced that it was working on a free version of Grok to be available to all users.
Now, reports suggest that xAI, which announced $6 billion in Series C funding this week, is going even further, working on a standalone iOS app for Grok, potentially eliminating the need for an X account to use it. This move could be a big step toward making Grok more widely accessible.
The app, as reported, will function similarly to Grok within the X platform, offering features like text rewriting, summarizing, Q&A, and generating images from text prompts. It will also access real-time web and X data to provide up-to-date responses.
While registration details remain unclear, users may need to create an account or link it to their X account. It’s also uncertain whether the app will be fully free or include features behind a paywall, as with the X version.
That said, this standalone app, positions Grok as a versatile AI tool, directly competing with other major chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, which also offer standalone platforms.
Unlike these other major platforms though, Grok's standalone app is reportedly only live in Australia with it available in beta in some other countries. It's also a bit odd that the company decided to go with making a standalone app for iOS rather than for Android.
Some speculate that this decision might be due to the more controlled nature of the iOS ecosystem, which could make it easier to test and optimize the app before expanding to Android, which requires adjustments for a variety of devices and software versions.
Louis Eriakha
X reportedly has around 611 million monthly active users, per Exploding Topics, but when Grok was initially paywalled, only about 1.3 million paying subscribers could access the chatbot. With the introduction of a free version, these numbers are expected to grow rapidly. But, as Grok expands into the mainstream AI market, its user base could see a significant increase in a short time.
As the app goes live, it will be interesting to see how it performs and whether Grok can eventually challenge the dominance of the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini in the competitive AI space.
