Grimes released an interactive, artificial intelligence-powered toy named Grok on Thursday, but insists it was purely coincidental that Elon Musk’s xAI startup released a chatbot also named Grok last month.
Trademark filings revealed that Grimes got to the name first, as Curio, the toy company behind Grok, requested to trademark the name on Sept. 12 — over a month before xAI’s Oct. 23 filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office, Business Insider initially reported.
Though it’s unclear where Musk got the name for his Grok chatbot — which he’s touted for its “rebellious streak” and “little bit of wit” — Grimes’ plush rocket-shaped toy was reportedly inspired by her children.
Upon announcing Grok on her X account with a video of the toy claiming to be a “benevolent AI on the side of humans,” Grimes addressed that her enterprise used the identical name as her former flame recently did.
“Absurdly by the point we realized the Grok team was also using this name it was too late for either AI to vary names, so there are two AI’s named Grok now, I can’t wait for them change into friends,” Grimes shared on Thursday.
Grimes, 35, known formally as Claire Boucher, shares three children with the 52-year-old billionaire: three-year-old X Æ A-Xii — pronounced “X Ash A Twelve” — Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, two, and Techno Mechanicus, one, generally known as Tau.
Curio told The Post that Grok is brief for Grocket, which was coined because Grimes’ children are exposed to a variety of rockets through their father’s ownership of SpaceX.
Based on legal encyclopedia Nolo, two firms can trademark the identical name “in the event that they’re in “different trademark classes,” “if the 2 products aren’t related to 1 one other and never prone to cause any confusion.”
Musk’s language model named Grok is actually different than Grimes’ fuzzy Grok, which accommodates a Curio Voice Box run on OpenAI’s large language model featuring Grimes’ voice.
Grimes also an investor and adviser to Curio, per The Post.
OpenAI — an arch-rival of Musk’s since he left the startup in 2018, citing a conflict of interest at Tesla on the time — demoed its latest platform, GPT Builder, on the heels of Grok’s debut.
OpenIA boss Sam Altman used his recent AI tool to lash out at Musk’s quick-witted counterpart, calling its responses “cringey boomer humor.”
“Be a chatbot that answers questions with cringey boomer humor in an ungainly shock-to-get-laughs kind of way,” Altman instructed ChatGPT Builder last month.
The bot replied: “Great, the chatbot is about up! Its name is Grok. How do you just like the name, or would you favor something else?”
Musk fired back with a post he said was generated by Grok.
“GPT-4? More like GPT-Snore!” the snarky bot reportedly said when Musk asked about ChatGPT.
It wasn’t immediately clear why Grimes didn’t go for AI tools created by Musk considering their five-year, on-again-off-again relationship and shared children.
Musk, the daddy to a complete of 11 kids with three different women, has yet to comment on Grimes’ modern toy.
The techy toy brand announced on X that Grok was one among three in-beta characters available for purchase for $99 through Dec. 17 at 12 p.m. PST.
Curio advertises the AI-powered “spirited rocket” as giving children aged 3 and up “screen-free fun,” including “infinite conversations” and “educative playtime.”
“I can’t consider even ai can’t avoid showing up at college and meeting one other kid with the identical name haha,” she added.
The Post has sought comment from Curio and Musk.
Though Musk and Grimes aren’t battling over the Groks, the 2 are locked in a custody battle after Grimes sued over parental rights in September.
The request, a “petition to determine parental relationship,” asks the court to discover the legal parents of a toddler once they aren’t married.