Billions of users of Telegram will be able to use the Grok chatbot through a partnership between the messaging giant and Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence business, xAI.
In order to take advantage of enormous user base of Telegram and solidify its position in the cutthroat AI market, xAI will invest $300 million in a combination of stock and cash as part of the agreement to integrate its AI-powered chatbot straight into the app.
Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, revealed the one-year agreement, which also has a revenue-sharing scheme. As a result of this arrangement, Telegram will get half of any subscription fees made by Grok’s services through the Grok chatbot app.
In response to privacy concerns, Durov emphasized that user data is protected because xAI would only access information that users voluntarily provide to Grok during their interactions with the chatbot.
The partnership comes as AI companies look for better data to train and improve their algorithms. Companies like Meta Platforms have started using public user interactions for AI development as a result of the saturation of many open-source data sources.
Whether or not xAI will use the data of Telegram correspondingly is still uncertain. The social networking site X, whichwas purchased earlier this year by xAI, claims in its privacy statement that it trains its AI systems on user posts that are accessible to the public.
As a hint of its aspirations in the technology sector, xAI has also sought a number of alliances this year to increase its footprint in financial services and AI infrastructure.
When contacted by Reuters, neither Telegram nor xAI immediately provided more remarks on the agreement.