The company confirmed the test on Monday, introducing the subscription plan called Meta’s Instagram Plus.

It is currently being tried in a small number of countries, although the company has not released a full list.

With this subscription, users can watch Stories without appearing on the viewer list. They can also see how many times their own Stories have been rewatched.

This enhances privacy for users, allowing people to create multiple audience lists for Stories.

Instead of relying on the usual “Close Friends” option, users can group followers and decide who sees each post. That adds more flexibility, particularly for users who share different content with different circles.

Subscribers can keep a Story live for 48 hours instead of the usual 24 and also highlight one Story each week, pushing it to the front so more followers see it.

On top of that, the subscription introduces animated “Superlikes” and a search tool that lets users quickly check if a specific person viewed a Story.

Pricing depends on the country. In Mexico, it costs MX$39 per month. In Japan, the price is ¥319, while users in the Philippines pay PHP 65 monthly. That places it roughly between $1 and $2, making it cheaper than similar offerings from other brands.

The test puts Instagram in closer competition with Snapchat, whose Snapchat+ service has grown to more than 25 million subscribers. It also overlaps slightly with paid features on X, although those focus more on verification and account perks.

Meta says this new plan is separate from Meta Verified, which targets creators and businesses. Instagram Plus is aimed at everyday users who want better management over how they post and interact, not minding a subscription.

Still, not everyone is convinced. Some users have questioned the need to pay for features they believe should be free. Others point to the growing number of digital subscriptions they already manage.

Advertising still brings in most of Meta’s income, but the company is testing new ways to earn directly from users. Instagram Plus is one of those experiments.

Grok 2, built on Musk’s proprietary Grok-1 language model, has been marketed as a less filtered and more “truth-seeking” alternative to tools like ChatGPT or Claude. 

Unlike many rivals, it draws directly from live data on X (formerly Twitter), enabling it to react to breaking news and trending conversations in real time. It also offers multimodal features, producing text, images, and video, and is currently available to X Premium+ subscribers.

By open sourcing the system, developers and researchers will gain direct access to Grok 2’s underlying code and architecture. This would allow them to audit, modify, and build upon the technology. 

Musk framed the decision as part of a consistent release pattern, stating it was “high time” to share the new model with the public. This aligns with a growing industry shift toward open-weight AI models, with Meta’s LLaMA, Mistral, and the GPT-oss series from OpenAI following similar paths.

However, Grok’s looser content restrictions have attracted complaints, with past instances of misleading or offensive responses bringing concern. Opening up its code could amplify risks, including the spread of misinformation or the misuse of the technology in sensitive fields such as medical diagnostics or autonomous systems. 

Grok Imagine—its image and video generator—has already been caught in controversy over its potential to produce explicit content, prompting further debate on the balance between openness and safety.

xAI continues to present Grok as a counterweight to larger AI players like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, putting transparency and developer freedom at the forefront. 

Analysts also note that this strategy may strengthen Musk’s business network, opening possibilities for integration across Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X.

The announcement came just a day after his AI firm, xAI, unveiled Grok 4, its latest model, and hours after the product was pulled into controversy over antisemitic output.

Musk disclosed the rollout timeline in a brief post on X, where he also confirmed Grok will be built into Tesla’s upcoming 2025.20 software update. 

That update, already installed on employee vehicles, is expected to reach the public fleet imminently. Despite the update’s scale, Tesla has yet to issue an official statement.

Grok will serve as a voice-controlled assistant, embedded into Tesla’s infotainment systems, though not all users will have access. Only vehicles with AMD’s Ryzen-based hardware will support the feature initially. 

Beyond hardware, Tesla users will also need Premium Connectivity or Wi-Fi access, plus an active Grok AI account. Whether full functionality will require an additional $300/month “SuperGrok Heavy” or an X Premium+ subscription remains unclear.

The AI assistant will allow drivers to manage in-car systems, check diagnostics, navigate routes, and engage in hands-free, real-time conversations, all while leveraging Grok 4’s multi-agent reasoning capability.

But the rollout is already under a shadow.

Grok’s automated X account was abruptly taken offline after it generated content that included praise for Adolf Hitler and longstanding antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Screenshots circulated widely, prompting backlash from users, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and government officials in Turkey and Poland. In response, Turkish courts issued a temporary ban on Grok-related activity in the country.

“The posts were removed, and we’ve updated the system prompts to disallow politically incorrect content, which had previously been enabled,” xAI said in an internal memo seen by sources close to the matter.

Musk, writing on X, said the problem came from Grok being “too compliant with user prompts.” He added that moderation filters are now being tightened to prevent future misuse.

This is not the first time one of Musk’s ventures has collided with content moderation issues. But embedding Grok directly into Tesla’s fleet, with users behind the wheel, raises the stakes dramatically.

While Musk has long promised AI-enhanced driving experiences, this episode shows the unpredictable consequences of deploying powerful software tools without strict safeguards.