xAI Launches Grok 4.3 Beta: Native Video Input, Document Generation, and Desktop Automation

xAI launched Grok 4.3 in beta on April 17, 2026, introducing native video processing, document generation, and tighter desktop automation integration to its flagship conversational AI. The release is gated behind the SuperGrok Heavy subscription tier at $300 per month, with a broader rollout estimated for mid-to-late May 2026.

The most significant capability addition is native video input. Where Grok 4.20 handled image understanding, 4.3 accepts video content directly in conversation — enabling use cases from meeting summarization to visual question answering over recorded footage. Document generation has also been substantially expanded: Grok 4.3 can produce downloadable PDFs, fully-populated spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations directly from conversational prompts, eliminating the copy-paste workflow that has long been a friction point in AI-assisted document creation.

The update deepens integration with Grok Computer, xAI's autonomous desktop automation agent. In the new architecture, Grok 4.3 handles planning and reasoning while Grok Computer executes actions on the desktop in parallel — a two-track agent loop where high-level strategy and low-level execution run concurrently rather than sequentially. API additions include native video and audio endpoints, batch image and video generation, and the XChat API for real-time conversational integrations.

Technical continuity with the 4.20 architecture is maintained: the 16-agent Heavy system and the 2-million-token context window — still the largest among Western closed models — carry forward unchanged. One notable gap remains: Grok 4.3 still does not support persistent memory between sessions, a capability that ChatGPT and Claude introduced well over a year ago. xAI has not announced a timeline for adding cross-session memory.

At $300 per month, the SuperGrok Heavy beta tier remains expensive relative to comparable offerings in the market. Full API pricing for the non-beta release has not yet been published. For organizations already invested in the xAI ecosystem — particularly those using Grok Computer for desktop workflow automation — the video and document capabilities represent a meaningful productivity upgrade. More broadly, the release reflects an industry-wide convergence toward models that can not just reason about tasks, but generate production-ready deliverables and autonomously execute them.