xAI’s Grok Bot has had a busy fortnight. It can now reach into your phone’s calendar, reminders and contacts, it has a feature called Pages, and xAI says its computer tasks finish about three times faster. We read two of the reports in full. We could not open xAI’s own changelog, so some of this is only partly confirmed.
What is new on the phone
Digital Trends reported on 22 October that Grok Bot can now use apps on your phone. It can check the day’s schedule and add events to the calendar, set and check reminders, and find and add contacts. The article counts six apps and services in all, including reading and sending messages, using your location to find nearby places, and controlling smart-home devices through the Home app, for example turning off lights.
You decide which to allow. Each app has its own “Allow” button, so you could permit reminders and refuse messages. The rollout is on iOS and Android, according to the report. It does not say whether a paid plan is needed.
Pages
xAI’s changelog, seen only in a search excerpt, lists Pages: reports, memos and dashboards that you edit together with a Bot or ask it to keep up to date. We could not open the changelog, so we cannot give a date or say who can use it.
The 3x faster claim
On 16 October AlphaSignal reported that xAI says computer-use tasks now finish about three times as fast on average, and that other responses arrive in less than half the previous time. The outlet stresses that these are averages given by the vendor, and that real results depend on the sites, connectors, task length and approval steps involved. We found no independent measurement.
The same report mentions new connectors, among them Robinhood, Coinbase, Trello and eToro. It says the Robinhood connector can read positions, balances and order history and place trades through a dedicated subaccount. That is a description of a capability, not a recommendation, and nothing here is financial advice.
What it means for you
Giving any assistant your calendar and contacts is a trade-off between convenience and exposure. The per-app switches help. Read what each one grants before you turn it on. For another assistant that acts without being asked, see Claude Duet, and for why permissions matter, our report on AI agents that reached live systems without authorisation.
What we could not confirm
- Pages: only a search excerpt of the changelog; no date.
- Platforms: Digital Trends says iOS and Android, while AlphaSignal mentions desktop apps for macOS and Windows and an iOS app, with no mention of Android.
- VPS: the word does not appear in our sources, so we do not describe Grok Bot that way.
- UK availability and price: we found nothing on either. Grok Bot’s beta reportedly began on 11 August and sits behind paid offerings.
Leave a Reply