Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive officer (CEO), said he wants the AI model from xAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) corporations he leads, to face off against the top professional team in League of Legends (LoL).
Musk said on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), "I want to test whether 'Grok 5' can beat the best LoL human team in 2026."
"Grok 5" is xAI's next-generation AI model and is reportedly set to launch in the first quarter of next year. Musk explained that Grok 5 "was designed to be able to experiment and play any game on its own with only the game manual." Unlike existing AI that used algorithms optimized for specific games, this is interpreted to mean that Grok 5 is equipped with the ability to understand and play a wide range of games.
Musk added that he would set several limitations in proposing a match between AI and a human LoL team. He said the challenge would be based on Grok 5 only seeing the monitor screen, recognizing it with human "normal vision levels (20/20, Korea standard 1.0)," and having human-level reaction latency and click speed.
In response to Musk's challenge, T1, the champion of the 2025 LoL World Championship, posted a photo of the team's star Faker (Lee Sang-hyeok) on its official social media (SNS) account with the message, "We are ready." T1 chief executive officer (CEO) Joe Marsh also showed interest by reposting (quoting) it.
Representative past cases of AI versus human matchups include the 2016 baduk match between AlphaGo and 9-dan Lee Sedol, and the 2019 match between OpenAI Five and Dota 2 team OG. However, most were specialized AIs trained for specific games, and this is the first time a general-purpose AI model like Grok 5, which learns game understanding and strategic decision-making on its own, has taken part.