What marketing lesson we can learn from Elon Musk and xAi?
Viral and controversy are still the best.
One day before Grok 4 launch, Elon’s team “unleashed” Grok 3 model available on X.com.
Usually, LLMs available through APIs or chat interfaces online are controlled on their input and output. There are scripts and LLM tasks running in the background to check if chat between LLM and user is not violating any rules, is not against the law, or just not aligned with netiquette.
Because of those limitations, AI won’t give you a recipe for 💣 or won’t offend the prime minister of a country. Of course, there are different methods to omit those limitations (which is called jailbreaking LLM), but it requires knowledge on how models are working under the hood. It’s also typical arms race - if user are exploiting the model in a particular way, this way will be at some point blocked by providers, and another way will be figured out.
However, xAi team has decided to intentionally remove some of the limitations of Grok on x.com, allowing it to speak more… freely? I think it was not only removing limitations, but also changing system prompt, so as the model would be speaking very controversial things and be reckless.
Result?
Grok 3 started insulting people. It made bold, political claims. It referenced conspiracy theories. And then… it was turned off.
Was this a failure? Not even close. It was marketing genius.
Unique Selling Proposition: More Freedom
Elon reminded the world - loudly - that Grok is different. While OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google play it safe with filters and PR language, Elon’s team invited controversy. They embraced the chaos to make Grok’s positioning clear:
- Less censored.
- More provocative.
- Not afraid of the “dangerous” questions.
”It doesn’t matter how they talk, as long as they’re talking.”
This unleashed Grok was a viral controversy maker on demand. There was a real flood of headlines, articles and videos about this unexpected situation. What’s more, users started “poking the monster” to see how far it can go. And it went very, very far. So far, that some governments started to think about blocking access to X.com locally.
However, all of these resulted in peak popularity of Grok models in the same week the new model was launched. It was a “free” ad with global reach.
As a result, Grok 4 was super hyped from the very beginning, and the hype is still there. There are thousands of tweets about how good (or how bad) it is.
3 lessons we can learn here
- Be different. It’s crucial to have USP or just stand out from the crowd of competitors.
- Viral and controversy are working, but you need to be ready for bad press.
- Plan dates carefully, so as the hyped traffic can be satisfied.
Kamil Kwapisz