SAN FRANCISCO — xAI has given Grok a productivity upgrade that lets the assistant work while its users step away. The company rolled out a new feature called Automations on July 16, allowing people to describe a recurring task once and let Grok handle it automatically, then report back with a log of what it did.
The idea is simple and powerful: no code, no complicated setup. A user writes an instruction in plain language, chooses either a calendar schedule or a trigger, and Grok takes it from there. It is the kind of quality-of-life feature that turns a chatbot into a genuine assistant, and it lands Grok squarely alongside the scheduled-task capabilities offered by rival AI systems.
Free scheduling for everyone
The most accessible tier runs on a calendar. Users can set an automation to fire once or on a daily, weekday, weekly, monthly or yearly cadence at a time they choose, and that scheduling is free for all Grok users, including the no-cost tier. Want a news digest each morning or a status summary pulled together every Monday? That can be set up without paying a cent. The move fits xAI's pattern of pushing capable tools to a broad audience, echoing its recent decision to put Grok inside Microsoft Office apps at no charge.
Email triggers and deep integrations
For heavier users, xAI added a more reactive capability. SuperGrok subscribers can set email triggers, letting Grok watch an inbox and fire an automation when a message matches criteria such as sender, recipient or subject keywords, then draft a reply. SuperGrok is listed at $30 per month or $300 a year. Automations also plug into user-defined connectors that link Grok to outside services including Slack, Google Workspace, GitHub, Airtable and Salesforce, plus reusable Skills packages, so a single job can pull data from one tool, summarize it and post the result to another. Coverage from outlets like Basenor walked through how the feature works shortly after launch.
