Elon Musk on Thursday unveiled Grok 4, the latest AI model from xAI, his multibillion-dollar initiative to rival OpenAI and Google. Without citing detailed evidence, Musk claimed that the model aces standardized tests and exhibits doctorate-level knowledge in a wide array of different disciplines. "Grok 4 is a postgrad-level in everything," Musk said during an hour-long live broadcast, which began after midnight in New York. "At least with respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject. Competing AI developers, such as OpenAI and Google, have routinely released similar publications for their models.

AI chatbots from tech companies such as OpenAI and Google have been getting so-called reasoning upgrades over the past months – ideally to make them better at giving us answers we can trust, but recent testing suggests they are sometimes doing worse than previous models. The errors made by chatbots, known as "hallucinations", have been a problem from the start, and it is becoming clear we may never get rid of them. Hallucination is a blanket term for certain kinds of mistakes made by the large language models (LLMs) that power systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. It is best known as a description of the way they sometimes present false information as true. But it can also refer to an AI-generated answer that is factually accurate, but not actually relevant to the question it was asked, or fails to follow instructions in some other way.

The year that ChatGPT went viral, only two US companies--OpenAI and Google--could boast truly cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Three years on, AI is no longer a two-horse race, nor is it purely an American one. A new report published today by Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) highlights just how crowded the field has become. OpenAI and Google are still neck and neck in the race to build bleeding-edge AI, the report shows. But several other companies are closing in.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued new instructions to scientists that partner with the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (AISI) that eliminate mention of "AI safety," "responsible AI," and "AI fairness" in the skills it expects of members and introduces a request to prioritize "reducing ideological bias, to enable human flourishing and economic competitiveness." The information comes as part of an updated cooperative research and development agreement for AI Safety Institute consortium members, sent in early March. Previously, that agreement encouraged researchers to contribute technical work that could help identify and fix discriminatory model behavior related to gender, race, age, or wealth inequality. Such biases are hugely important because they can directly affect end users and disproportionately harm minorities and economically disadvantaged groups. The new agreement removes mention of developing tools "for authenticating content and tracking its provenance" as well as "labeling synthetic content," signaling less interest in tracking misinformation and deep fakes.

In a blog post spotted by The Verge, the company this week published its response to President Trump's AI Action Plan. Announced at the end of February, the initiative saw the White House seek input from private industry, with the goal of eventually enacting policy that will work to "enhance America's position as an AI powerhouse" and enable innovation in the sector. "America's robust, balanced intellectual property system has long been key to our global leadership on innovation. In the same document, the company recommends the US maintain tight export controls on AI chips to China. It also says the US government should broadly adopt AI tools.

Roblox, Discord, OpenAI and Google are launching a nonprofit organization called ROOST, or Robust Open Online Safety Tools, which hopes "to build scalable, interoperable safety infrastructure suited for the AI era." The organization plans on providing free, open-source safety tools to public and private organizations to use on their own platforms, with a special focus on child safety to start. The press release announcing ROOST specifically calls out plans to offer "tools to detect, review, and report child sexual abuse material (CSAM)." Partner companies are providing funding for these tools, and the technical expertise to build them, too. The operating theory of ROOST is that access to generative AI is rapidly changing the online landscape, making the need for "reliable and accessible safety infrastructure" all the more urgent.

On Tuesday, Google announced its own new tools, including a conversational assistant called Gemini Live, which can do many of the same things. It also revealed that it's building a sort of "do-everything" AI agent, which is currently in development but will not be released until later this year. Soon you'll be able to explore for yourself to gauge whether you'll turn to these tools in your daily routine as much as their makers hope, or whether they're more like a sci-fi party trick that eventually loses its charm. Here's what you should know about how to access these new tools, what you might use them for, and how much it will cost. What it's capable of: The model can talk with you in real time, with a response delay of about 320 milliseconds, which OpenAI says is on par with natural human conversation.

Meta Platforms on Thursday released early versions of its latest large language model, Llama 3, and an image generator that updates pictures in real time while users type prompts, as it races to catch up to generative AI market leader OpenAI. The models will be integrated into virtual assistant Meta AI, which the company is pitching as the most sophisticated of its free-to-use peers. The assistant will be given more prominent billing within Meta's Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger apps as well as a new standalone website that positions it to compete more directly with Microsoft-backed OpenAI's breakout hit ChatGPT. The announcement comes as Meta has been scrambling to push generative AI products out to its billions of users to challenge OpenAI's leading position on the technology, involving an overhaul of computing infrastructure and the consolidation of previously distinct research and product teams. The social media giant equipped Llama 3 with new computer coding capabilities and fed it images as well as text this time, though for now the model will output only text, Chris Cox, Meta's chief product officer, said in an interview.

Earlier today, President Joe Biden signed the most sweeping set of regulatory principles on artificial intelligence in America to date: a lengthy executive order that directs all types of government agencies to make sure America is leading the way in developing the technology while also addressing the many dangers that it poses. The order explicitly pushes agencies to establish rules and guidelines, write reports, and create funding and research initiatives for AI--"the most consequential technology of our time," in the president's own words. The scope of the order is impressive, especially given that the generative-AI boom began just about a year ago. But the document's many parts--and there are many--are at times in tension, revealing a broader confusion over what, exactly, America's primary attitude toward AI should be: Is it a threat to national security, or a just society? Is it a geopolitical weapon?

Elon Musk's plans for his own AI company are starting to come into focus. The Twitter CEO said that he wants to "create a third option" for a company that could challenge OpenAI and Google. In an interview with Fox News, Musk said that he's thinking of calling the venture "TruthGPT" and that the goal would be to create a "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe" and that "hopefully does more good than harm." Musk acknowledged that he would be starting with a significant disadvantage to his rivals as he's "starting late." And, as is often the case, it's unclear how serious or far along his plans actually are.