On Friday afternoon, Elon Musk confidently declared to the world that “Saving money for the distant future is pointless with the advent of super intelligent abundance.” Three days later, the same Elon Musk said the cost of running AI was getting a little too steep even for him, and that he needed to start saving a little money.

The billionaire appears to have imposed a tighter-than-usual weekly token limit on Grok Bot, the always-on AI agent launched by his company xAI in August, due to its out-of-control tab. “The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue,” Musk wrote in an X post Sunday afternoon responding to a user who complained they’d hit their weekly usage limit earlier than usual, and asked Musk personally for a reset.

Multiple users chimed in to say they were surprised to see their Grok Bot token allowances had been suddenly and inexplicably depleted. “I was at 68% yesterday and woke up to 98%,” one person wrote in an X post. “What’s it called when you take away something someone already paid for? Isn’t that theft?” Another wrote, “Is Elon joking or are we getting royally screwed here? My usage went from 58% to 100% in less than an hour with nothing running. What is going on?” It’s unclear if xAI will permanently enforce a stricter token limit moving forward or if this was a one-off emergency measure; the company didn’t immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.

Developed in response to other popular AI agents like OpenAI’s Dots and Meta’s Muse , Grok Bot has been promoted by xAI as a kind of virtual teammate that can be trusted to handle complex tasks while also checking back in for human approval when needed.

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