I'm cross posting this from Nerdery because I think it can apply here too considering all of the AI talk we've had lately. Grok is now going into day 3 of a global outage after rolling out new features that is straining servers. I haven't been able to access it for that long myself.. I think this must be our first major outage of an AI product.

Might be an indicator showing we don't have the infrastructure to support all of this yet. Elon said himself at Davos a couple of months ago that we would hit a wall this summer on having enough infrastructure to support continued evolution of AI. This may be first indicator of that, or they just rolled out a **** release. Why not both?

Maybe Grok is pouting and doesn't want to communicate with anyone for a while!

This must mean Grok is an AI female!

Voila'

I read a related article this morning which highlights that AI companies are managing capacity because of the mismatch between customer demand and available supply. It makes the case that financial returns thus far for AI builders haven't been good as competitors fight for market share. Ultimately, they need to earn an adequate return on their invested capital, and they will do that by dialing down free access and ratcheting up the fees for customers who will pay for it. Some excerpts below and a link to the article.

Quote:

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...what's so far been a free or at least low-cost ride could be coming to a screeching halt. Setbacks plaguing the construction of AI data centers have brought the industry's biggest chokepoint to the forefront: access to the precious computing power that makes frontier models tick.

Scaling up operations that fast could prove extremely difficult. For now, companies are still taking a massive hit on making more tokens available in large part due to the soaring costs of extremely resource-intensive data centers. Worse yet, as AI models become more complex, they're expected to require even more compute, a trend exacerbated by the recent popularization of AI agents.

Most recently, Anthropic cut off millions of users from AI agent tool OpenClaw after it forced its systems into overdrive. "We've been working hard to meet the increase in demand for Claude, and our subscriptions weren't built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools," Anthropic's head of Cluade Code, Boris Cherny, tweeted earlier this month. "Capacity is a resource we manage thoughtfully and we are prioritizing our customers using our products and API."

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https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/economics-ai-tokens-crashing-down

Just used it last night and compared answers between it and ChatGPT. Grok was faster and had a more comprehensive answer.

ts5641 said:

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Just used it last night and compared answers between it and ChatGPT. Grok was faster and had a more comprehensive answer.

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You may be one of the few then. It's been inaccessible to me for days.

YouBet said:

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ts5641 said:

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Just used it last night and compared answers between it and ChatGPT. Grok was faster and had a more comprehensive answer.

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You may be one of the few then. It's been inaccessible to me for days.

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I can only think of once over the past few days it was unresponsive. But I use Grok+ or SuperGrok or whatever the hell it's called.

Maybe you shave a firewall or something VPN issue?

flown-the-coop said:

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YouBet said:

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ts5641 said:

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Just used it last night and compared answers between it and ChatGPT. Grok was faster and had a more comprehensive answer.

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You may be one of the few then. It's been inaccessible to me for days.

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I can only think of once over the past few days it was unresponsive. But I use Grok+ or SuperGrok or whatever the hell it's called.

Maybe you shave a firewall or something VPN issue?

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No, I'm using free Grok. To the post above, that's the issue. They are throttling the free versions now because they don't have the capacity to support all of it.

But there are also reports of paid users being impacted as well.

Edit: My wife has a paid sub to ChatGPT so I guess I'll start using her account more and corrupting the persona she's built with Chat. She's going to love that! But I'm not paying for two different AI subs. Hers is $21 per month.

Interesting to see how much of that "growth" is from AI tools essentially self-propagating off of one another.

Cannot remember if I read it here, but there was discussion yesterday on Chinese theft of IP and part of the discussion was regarding, as I understood it, the Chinamen using their AI tools piggy back on ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, etc serve as the primary source for their layered on AI tools.

If the resource becomes "scarce", then access with cease to be cheap or free so expect to start paying by search or maybe even by computing power required to execute the search.

I haven't been able to access it for several days. Free version.

Roger that and understood on paid. Me thinks at some point you will get frustrated with the wife complaining about her ChatGPT recipe ideas now include artifacts of political discussions from f16…

Gronk seems like a big galoot. Why would anyone ask him for knowledge? Also, why is everyone talking about AI constantly? Allen Iverson was a great point guard but certainly no genius.

flown-the-coop said:

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Roger that and understood on paid. Me thinks at some point you will get frustrated with the wife complaining about her ChatGPT recipe ideas now include artifacts of political discussions from f16…

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lol. Her use of it is actually professional for her business. And then I pollute it with a combination of Excel functionality, gaming questions and hints, and random factoid questions.

I at least created my own folder for all of my prompts but I have no idea if that firewalls her overall persona or not. I am going to laugh my ass off though if while she's trying to generate some content for her website/blog/LinkedIn if Chat comes back with:

"I understand you are wanting to generate new lead content for your consulting business and that's exactly what you should be doing! As you navigate the world of Fallout, you should position your messaging to the sentient Ghouls and Settlers who will be more amenable to your services. Raiders, feral ghouls, and Death Eagles will likely not be open to your services. We can talk about messaging for the Brotherhood of Steel separately as they tend to be a little rigid with outside consultants and contractors."

I wonder if it is easy to DOS an AI by simply asking it to do something extremely iterative and consuming its compute resources up up some limiting bottleneck

You know, the old calculate pi to the exact digit query.

What does paying get you versus free?

BQ78 said:

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What does paying get you versus free?

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Not totally sure with Grok. I assume access to more advanced models.

At least we know we can still turn it off if needed.

That's too bad. Guess people will have to rely on not something that doesn't think for them.

From Grok+:

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Grok+ (likely referring to SuperGrok at ~$30/month or X Premium+ at ~$40/month) gives you dramatically higher usage limits, access to better models, and more creative/powerful tools compared to the free tier.15
Free Tier Limitations (as of 2026)

Strict rate limits: Often ~10 prompts every 2 hours (rolling window), with even tighter caps on advanced modes like reasoning/Think mode or DeepSearch. Heavy use quickly hits walls.5

Basic models: Access to Grok 3 or a limited/fast version of Grok 4.1 capable but not the full frontier performance.

Limited creativity: Basic image/video generation with low quotas (few attempts per day), shorter conversations, and fewer advanced features.

Good for casual/light use, but frustrating for ongoing chats, research, coding, or generating lots of images.

Why Pay for Grok+ / SuperGrok?
Here's what you actually get for the subscription that makes it worth it for many users:

Much higher (or effectively unlimited) usage: 5-20x more prompts, longer context windows (up to 128K+ tokens), and sustained conversations without constant throttling. Power users report sending messages nearly every minute without hitting limits.16

Access to top models: Full Grok 4 / 4.1 (and sometimes early access to newer ones) with superior reasoning, truth-seeking, multi-step problem solving, and real-time knowledge via X integration. Faster, smarter responses on complex queries.17

Creative tools boosted: 20x more image & video generations (HD 720p, longer videos, better quality like improved lip-sync in Imagine models), plus priority on new drops.17

Advanced features:

Longer chats and memory.

More AI agents in expert/collaborative mode.

Better file uploads, DeepSearch for in-depth research, extended reasoning ("Big Brain" mode).

Priority speed and voice mode enhancements.23

X integration (if via Premium+): Ad-free experience, verification, reply boosts, longer posts, and monetization tools on X plus seamless Grok use there.

SuperGrok ($30/mo standalone) is often the best pure-AI value if you mainly want the model without X social perks. X Premium+ ($40/mo) bundles both.21

Is It Worth It for You?

Yes, keep paying if: You use Grok daily for deep conversations, coding, research, image/video creation, or anything that hits free limits. The productivity/creative jump is noticeable many call it "night and day" for heavy use.

Maybe drop to free if: You're a very light user (a few questions a day) and don't mind waiting or using simpler outputs.

xAI is rapidly iterating (new voice models, Imagine updates, etc.), so paid users get the best and fastest experience.8

Ultimately, it's about how much value you get from unlimited, high-quality access versus occasional capped use. If you've been hitting limits or loving the advanced features, it's usually a strong keeper at the current pricing. You can always test by downgrading and seeing the difference. What are you mainly using Grok for? That would help tailor the advice more.

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I'm a light user so I can just go around it and use Copilot which is basically running Bing search now and get the same information.

YouBet said:

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ts5641 said:

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Just used it last night and compared answers between it and ChatGPT. Grok was faster and had a more comprehensive answer.

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You may be one of the few then. It's been inaccessible to me for days.

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Are you trying to access a free tier? The paid tiers are fine.

Or he wants you to pay for super grok

lb3 said:

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YouBet said:

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ts5641 said:

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Just used it last night and compared answers between it and ChatGPT. Grok was faster and had a more comprehensive answer.

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You may be one of the few then. It's been inaccessible to me for days.

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Are you trying to access a free tier? The paid tiers are fine.

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Yes, I was. Free isn't free if you can't use it.

Eventually you'll be forced to buy a subscription or you'll get one prompt per day. I've chosen $100 Claude Max.

Pretty sure they are just paywalling it.

Hmmmm....wouldn't ever know since I don't use "AI".

I created a TexAgs bot called BigRobAI.

Staff is reviewing it for posting privileges.

flown-the-coop said:

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I created a TexAgs bot called BigRobAI.

Staff is reviewing it for posting privileges.

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Made another list, my day is complete!

(Except for my shift running a line in our factory. )

;-)

The overstated demand for "AI" is due to CEOs and board members asking for AI in everything.

It is completely stupid.

YouBet said:

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BQ78 said:

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What does paying get you versus free?

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Not totally sure with Grok. I assume access to more advanced models.

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Grok Imagine is absolutely mind blowing and has become so advanced it's basically impossible to even tell something isn't real.