Grimes, the futuristic pop singer and mother of Elon Musk’s children, is working on a plush AI toy named “Grok” with the Silicon Valley startup Curio. The toy reportedly has no relationship or affiliation with Musk’s AI chatbot from xAI, the “woke” chatbot that’s also named Grok, according to The Washington Post.
“Greetings! I’m Grok, Gabbo’s spirited rocket,” says Curio’s listing for a $99 limited beta edition of the toy. “With boundless energy, I’m always zooming off to explore the vastness of the cosmos. Ready to soar among the stars with me?”
The cute, plush toy is voiced by Grimes and is powered by generative artificial intelligence. Grok is shaped like a rocket and incorporates an AI chatbot to answer questions from a child. The product is “educational, imaginative, and oh-so-entertaining!” according to Curio. Grok is one of the first AI-enabled toys, but market research firm Contrive Datum Insights says the industry could be worth $35 billion by 2030.
At the center of every Grok doll is a Curio Voice Box running on OpenAI’s large language models. The Voice Box incorporates a cloud-connected processor, a lithium-ion battery, a speaker, and a microphone to answer simple questions from children. Grok was released alongside “Gabbo,” a friendly robot toy, as well as “Grem,” an alien who guides them all through the galaxy. The toy must be connected to wifi, but there’s no camera or screen, which was a leading design choice. Curio is pitching this line of toys as an antidote to children’s reliance on screens for entertainment.
You may be wondering how it’s possible for Grimes and Elon Musk to both name their AI-enabled products “Grok,” even though they’re allegedly unaffiliated. Grimes said the name is a shortening of “grocket,” which is what her children call the rockets they see all the time when they visit their father at SpaceX.
Musk gives a different explanation for the name of his AI chatbot, Grok. In its first announcement of the new product, X claimed the name is inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but the word comes from Robert Heinlein’s 1960s science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Hours after the announcement, Musk simply tweeted the title, “Stranger in a Strange Land.” The Tesla CEO may have been correcting his PR team or just acknowledging that the name is unrelated to Hitchhiker’s Guide, or maybe he just felt like saying “Stranger in a Strange Land.” In the book, Grok is a word that comes from Mars and means “to understand profoundly and intuitively.”
Grimes and Musk are currently involved in a custody battle over their kids and it remains to be seen whether there will be a fight over who has the right to call their AI baby “Grok.” Curio holds a trademark on the name which could create issues for Musk’s AI chatbot that rolled out to users last week.
Notably, Grimes and Curio’s founders gave exclusive interviews on Grok to a Washington Post journalist whom Musk has beefed with in the past. Elon Musk suspended the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz on Twitter last year after he accused her of doxxing. This was around the same time Musk suspended several journalists who had posted links to an account tracking his private jet. And he’s taken personal shots at Lorenz since then.
In the midst of this, there’s another AI company, Groq, who could also present trademark issues for the other Groks. Groq has been offering enterprise AI solutions for roughly 6 years and has trademarked its name as well. The founder of Groq, Jonathan Ross, called out the X CEO in a blog post titled “Welcome to Groq’s Galaxy, Elon” on November 9th. Ross says Musk’s chatbot is “phonetically identical to our company’s name and trademark” and “not fjord,” which is Hitchhiker’s Guide speak for “not cool.”