xAI's Grok 4 Fast: A Faster and Cheaper AI Model Debuts
So, Elon Musk's xAI is at it again. Just a short while after launching Grok 4, and following some pretty public hiccups with the chatbot, they're already rolling out something new: Grok 4 Fast. It sounds like they're trying to stay ahead in the crazy race for better AI.
From what I gather, Grok 4 Fast is designed to be quicker and more efficient. xAI claims it performs about as well as Grok 4 but uses a good chunk less "thinking tokens"—around 40 percent less, apparently. If that's true, it means faster answers and, supposedly, a whopping 98% price reduction to get the same level of performance. That's a big deal!
This reminds me a bit of what OpenAI does with GPT. They switch between a smart, efficient model for everyday stuff and a deeper reasoning model when things get complex. xAI seems to be doing something similar with a design that moves between a "reasoning" model and a "non-reasoning" one. It seems like a clever way to handle different types of requests.
I read that, on a platform called LMArena, Grok 4 Fast is doing really well in search-related tasks, and not too shabby in text-related ones either. The cool part is that xAI is making this available to everyone, even those on the free tier, across web, iOS, and Android.
However, let's be real. The AI world moves fast. It probably won't be long before Google drops the next version of Gemini, or Anthropic updates Claude Opus even further. It's a constant game of leapfrog, and I'm curious to see who jumps next.
Source: Engadget