In This Week in Grok: Grok Bot got a speed and polish update on Oct. 16 that SpaceXSI says makes computer tasks finish three times sooner. It can now read your X Chat messages and connect to Robinhood, Coinbase and eToro. That follows version 0.70.2, which gave bots their own email addresses with plus aliases. SpaceXSI also shipped Grok Voice 3.0, which went straight to first place on Artificial Analysis’ speech-to-speech index, and Musk pledged that SpaceX will make shoppers whole if the agent botches a purchase.
Grok Bot Gets Faster and Reads X Chat
SpaceXSI’s Oct. 16 update focuses on speed and polish. By its own average, computer tasks finish 3x sooner, and replies to everything else arrive in less than half the time. SpaceXSI has not published how it measured that.
Grok @Bot got much faster
Elon Musk, Oct. 16
- New look: chat cards have a cleaner design, and the app has a new typeface and themes.
- Voice: calls are faster, more reliable and better at remembering past conversations.
- X Chat: after you connect X, Grok Bot can read your X Chat messages and work across them. Without that connection it still reads only public X content.
- Tag it on X: tag @bot in a post and Grok Bot gets to work.
- Notifications: they now go only to the device you’re using.
- New connectors: Robinhood, Coinbase, Trello, PostHog, beehiiv, eToro and more. Teams can also submit plugins for review, to be listed in Grok Bot, in Cursor and later in Grok.
Paul Vann, who announced the X Chat feature, says he has had his bot reviewing and approving new message requests all week:
A lot of you have been asking for @bot to be able to access your @chat messages and message requests to help manage busy inboxes.
excited to share this is now live!
I've had my @bot reviewing new message requests all week, approving them, and helping me stay on top of my inbox. pic.twitter.com/vHnjyqyztH
— Paul Vann (@pjvann) October 16, 2026
Also, ask Grok @Bot to connect to your 𝕏 DMs. Best way to use it.
Elon Musk, Oct. 16
SpaceXSI hasn’t said what the Robinhood, Coinbase and eToro connectors can do. If you connect a brokerage or crypto account, keep approvals on for anything that could place a trade.
Earlier This Week: Bot Email Addresses and Plus Aliases
The v0.70.2 release on Oct. 11 bundles 0.69.0 through 0.70.1. The biggest change: a bot can claim its own email address and receive mail there. Anything it sends from that address waits for your approval on a draft card.
Three days later, Sam Sokolin added plus aliases: “Send and receive email using dedicated aliases, or set up routines that only trigger for mail to a specific alias!” Asked whether incoming mail can wake the bot, he replied that you can ask it to set up a routine for when it receives email, and that it “works exactly like a webhook.”
- Use one alias per job, such as receipts or newsletters, and have a routine run only for mail sent to that alias.
- When a sign-in emails a code or link, the bot now reads it from its own inbox or your connected Gmail or Outlook instead of asking you.
What Else Is in v0.70.2
- X without a connector: bots can search public X and read posts and profiles without you connecting an X account.
- In-chat apps: connectors that come with an app, such as Figma, Notion and Canva, can show it as an interactive card in the chat.
- Payments: bots can pay with X Money or Stripe Link.
- New connectors: QuickBooks Online, plus Glean, which connects through your Glean MCP URL.
- Safety: before an action it can’t undo, such as sending, posting, buying or deleting, a bot checks your own messages for approval. After a bank or brokerage connector returns data, it asks before sharing it anywhere else.
Grok Voice 3.0 Takes the Top Spot
SpaceXSI released Grok Voice 3.0 on Oct. 14, calling it “the world’s most intelligent speech-to-speech model.” It is live in the Voice Agent API at $0.08 a minute ($4.80 an hour), the same price as Grok Voice 2.0. Apps pointed at grok-voice-latest moved over automatically.
- Artificial Analysis ranks it No. 1 on its Speech to Speech Index at 86.9, ahead of the next model at 83.2 and 5.6 points above Grok Voice 2.0.
- It ranks first on task success (94.8%) but third on human preference (Elo 1070). Average time to first audio is 0.81 seconds, slower than Grok Voice 2.0’s 0.70.
- Grok Bot’s voice mode and Grok in Tesla already run on 3.0.
- SpaceXSI says Starlink call centres use Grok Voice for about 20,000 calls a day, and roughly 70% are resolved with no human involved.
- Custom voices can be cloned from a clip of up to 120 seconds. SpaceXSI says voice audio is never stored or used for training.
Our full Grok Voice 3.0 story has the complete benchmark breakdown.
Musk: SpaceX Will Make Grok Bot Shoppers Whole
On Oct. 15, Musk quoted a user whose Grok Bot booked a flight from a photo of a credit card and wrote:
If Grok @Bot makes a mistake with a purchase or leaks your card (never happened yet), SpaceX will make you whole.
Elon Musk, Oct. 15
- The written Grok Bot Terms still make the customer “solely responsible” for the consequences of agentic actions. SpaceXSI has not published a policy matching the pledge or a way to file a claim.
- Users reported that Amazon blocked their bots as an “unauthorized AI agent.” Amazon has not commented, and it isn’t clear how widely the block applies.
- Musk’s advice was to buy someplace else. He then floated “a competitor to Amazon” and said “Makes sense” to a pitch for an “agent first” store. No store, team or timeline has been announced.
- Until the pledge is in the terms, keep purchase approvals switched on and use a low-limit or virtual card.
Nvidia’s CEO: Grok Bot Demand Is “Skyrocketing”
In an interview clip quoted by Musk on Oct. 15, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said: “Grok Bot is super cool. The demand for Grok Bot, the consumption for Grok Bot is really skyrocketing.” Huang also said Nvidia and SpaceX engineers are designing a new server architecture that might suit both space and Earth. Musk said the resulting Star Mind computer will reach volume production next year, a claim with no specs or date from either company.
Jensen Huang says he loves working with Elon Musk, and reveals their engineering teams are designing a new type of server to put data centers in space
“I’m delighted that I love working with Elon. He’s using our technology for his own AI in training models and such, deploying models, of course."
"Grok Bot is super cool. The demand for Grok Bot, the consumption for Grok Bot is really skyrocketing. And then, of course, he rents it."
"And so the combination of these three things, he’s fairly unique in doing that. I guess Google does that. That would be yet another example."
"And so I think he also has the advantage that he loves the intersection between computing and the physical buildouts. He loves that whole area. Nobody knows more about energy than he does."
"One particular new market that we’re going to go explore together is putting data centers out in space. Our two engineering teams are working super closely together to create a new type of server, a new type of architecture that might be super good in space and on Earth.”
— Fireside Alpha (@firesidealpha) October 15, 2026
