Proud to be Grok’s 420th reviewer.

On October 4, 2024, Elon Musk said that xAI “has been and will open source its models, including weights and everything,” and that as the company created each new version, it would release the prior one. On August 23, 2025, he made an even more specific commitment: “Grok 3 will be made open source in about 6 months.”

That deadline passed roughly five months ago. It is now July 21, 2026, and the Grok 3 weights still have not been released.

In my opinion, these promises helped market xAI as the supposedly “open” alternative to OpenAI without being followed by the promised action. Whatever Musk’s private intent, the result was the same: xAI received the reputational benefit of a commitment it has not honored.

The newer Grok models (with the possible exception of Grok 4.1) also feel blander and more sterile, even where they perform better at tasks such as coding. Meanwhile, paid-user limits, particularly for media generation, have been sharply reduced.

This is the larger problem: Musk repeatedly asks people to judge his companies by what he says they will deliver in the future rather than by what they have actually delivered. He and xAI should be held accountable for the promises they use to attract customers and distinguish themselves from competitors.

Edit: And I was just shadowbanned on x.com immediately after posting this.