Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has introduced a significant new capability for its Grok AI model: the ability to process and analyze files via API. This update enables developers to directly upload various document types to Grok, allowing the model to read their contents and respond to related queries. Users can now interact with Grok by submitting files such as PDFs, CSVs, JSON data, and code scripts, receiving insights, summaries, or computational results based on the uploaded material—going beyond traditional text-only prompts.
The new file API is available for both Grok-4 and Grok-4 Fast. Users can attach multiple files within a single conversation, empowering the AI to cross-reference and reason across documents. For instance, someone could upload a PDF financial report alongside a CSV file containing recent sales figures and ask Grok to identify trends or generate a comparative analysis. Beyond reading and summarizing, xAI has also enabled Python code execution within the Grok environment, allowing the model to perform calculations or create visualizations directly from uploaded datasets. If a developer uploads a CSV of sales records, Grok can write and run code to compute averages, produce charts, or detect anomalies—all within the same chat session.
Pricing for this feature operates under a separate billing structure. Tool calls—including file uploads and associated analytical operations—are charged at $10 per 1,000 uses, in addition to standard token-based API fees. This pricing model clearly positions the file API as a premium offering aimed at developers, data analysts, and enterprise users.
The launch comes as Grok faces intense competition from established rivals like OpenAI’s GPT series and Anthropic’s Claude, both of which already support similar file-processing capabilities. Although xAI describes the file API as generally available, the company notes it is currently limited to specific Grok versions and remains subject to certain constraints regarding file size and quantity.
