What is Grok, and do customers use it to find businesses?
Grok is a set of AI models from xAI that developers can build into their own tools through an API, according to xAI’s developer documentation. That documentation also says Grok can search the web in real time when a search tool is turned on. Pew Research Center, which asked about Grok as a chatbot in its February 2026 survey, found that 8% of U.S. adults said they ever use it, well behind ChatGPT at 44%.
What xAI’s developer documentation says
xAI publishes documentation for developers at docs.x.ai. Its Get started page opens with “Build with the Grok API” and describes Grok as “models across code, text, voice, image, and video”. In plain terms, Grok is a set of AI models that developers can add to their own tools.
Those pages are written for developers. They are not a description of every app where a customer may meet Grok, so check the app itself for what it does.
Can it look things up?
The Models page says that, on its own, Grok has “no knowledge of current events” beyond its training data, and that to add realtime data a developer can turn on server-side search tools, which it names as Web Search and X Search. The Web Search page says that tool lets Grok “search the web in real-time” and browse web pages.
That is a developer setting, so an app may or may not use it for a given question. In general, an answer built on a search can reflect pages as they are now, while one built on training alone can be out of date.
Do customers use it to find businesses?
In Pew Research Center’s survey of 5,119 U.S. adults, conducted February 17 to 23, 2026, 8% said they ever use Grok. Pew wrote that “about one-in-ten or fewer say they use Grok, Claude or Character.ai”. In Pew’s chart, ChatGPT is at 44%.
Pew’s figure counts anyone who uses Grok for any reason. Nothing cited here measures how many people use it to find a business. The related answer on how many people use AI assistants has the wider picture.
Where it fits in your routine
With a smaller share of adults using it, Grok is usually a lower priority than the larger assistants. The documentation this page rests on describes the models developers build with, not the app a customer opens, so open the app yourself and ask it the questions your customers would ask before deciding whether it matters to you.
The simplest way to learn whether it matters to you is to ask every new inquiry how they found you and record “AI answer” when an assistant was involved. The related answer on checking what AI says about your business has the routine for the assistants you decide to watch. No one can promise that Grok will recommend a particular business.
Sources
- xAI, “Get started” (Grok API documentation)
- xAI, “Models” (Grok API documentation)
- xAI, “Web Search” (Grok API documentation)
- Pew Research Center, “Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact” (June 17, 2026)
Related answers
- How do you check what ChatGPT says about your business?
- How many people use AI assistants like ChatGPT?
- How do customers find businesses through AI assistants?
- What is DeepSeek, and should a business use it?
GEO: recommended in AI answers
When a customer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude or Google's AI who to call, the answer names a few businesses. GEO is the work of making yours one of them.