Why do many people still use Grok instead of ChatGPT or Claude?

A few years ago, common social questions were about Spotify or Apple Music, Instagram or TikTok, or whether they preferred Netflix or Amazon Prime. In 2026, the question people will typically ask someone is which AI chatbot they will use first – that's the real question that tells you something about a person today.

 

Although you may have built an AI system, using different tools for each use case, you surely have one tool that you use regularly. For some, that's currently Claude. Before switching to Claude, they used ChatGPT . However, there's one single reason why many people still open Grok every day (and it's something neither Claude nor ChatGPT can currently match).

Grok's X integration capabilities are quite powerful.

 

Grok is an AI chatbot from xAI, founded by none other than Elon Musk. It launched in November 2023 and has always been directly integrated into X (the company Musk acquired in 2022 and renamed from Twitter to X). In Grok's announcement post, the company stated that a unique advantage of this chatbot is its real-time knowledge of the world through the X platform.

Now, to better understand this, let's consider how all the AI ​​chatbots we use work. They are all trained on massive amounts of data. However, the training process has an end date, meaning the model only knows what exists up to the point it stops training. This is why an LLM can confidently tell you that the iPhone you're holding doesn't actually exist. That's where web search comes into play. Chatbots, including ChatGPT and Claude, are able to search the internet in real time to fill in these gaps and bring up new information from the web.

Instead of relying solely on internal training data from the broader web, Grok goes a step further by searching X's public posts in real time. So, similar to how all other AI chatbots automatically switch to web browsing when you request an update, Grok automatically retrieves information from X's live feed in addition to web browsing. This means it has access to public opinion, breaking news, and trending conversations in real time.

Social media is always the place where the most real-time conversations take place, and it's been found that no LLM works as well with social media as Grok. Even Meta AI , despite being integrated into every part of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, doesn't leverage these platforms in the way Grok leverages with X.

This feature works both in X and the standalone Grok app.

 

Using this feature is very simple and requires no prior setup. All you need to do is access Grok, and it will automatically assess whether the posts on X are relevant to your query and display them alongside your regular search results. Fortunately, this feature isn't limited to Grok's paid plans, which makes sense since it's a fundamental differentiating factor for the tool.

In practice, this means you can ask questions like "what are people saying about the new iPhone?" and in just seconds, Grok will scan posts and comments in real time. It will also include citations to the original tweets, so you can quickly verify the source of the information. The reason why this feature is so useful is quite simple.

When a new product is launched or an important announcement is made, the first place people turn is always social media. These days, most companies even announce their products and updates on X before anywhere else. With the sheer volume of information on these platforms, being able to quickly grasp the general sentiment surrounding the news being discussed is incredibly useful.

Even though there are countless articles about it from publications, they will all report the news and add the writer's personal opinion. Their main purpose is to inform you about what happened.

When people want to see how others are reacting in real time, many turn to X or Reddit. With Grok, instead of scrolling through hundreds of thousands of posts on X (many of which are just spam), Grok does the hard work and provides a sourced summary in seconds.

Instead of just asking on the Grok website (which offers a traditional AI chatbot experience) or the sidebar tab on X, you can also @grok in any post or thread to get a reply right on your timeline. However, it's worth noting that this direct in-thread reply feature is currently only available to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers. The only difference, besides getting Grok's reply directly in the thread, is that it will automatically use the post you're replying to as context.

Ultimately, it's still just AI.

Not everyone should abandon their current AI tools and switch to Grok. Its accuracy isn't entirely reliable, but that's not the point of discussion here. Let's acknowledge what deserves credit, and Grok's X integration capabilities are truly impressive and a reason why many people still use it daily.

However, as with any AI feature, it's best to consider the results with caution. Grok's summaries are only accurate based on the quality of the posts it sources, and X isn't known for its accuracy. Always verify before you trust anything.