"Faker, Let’s Compete"—Elon Musk’s Challenge... T1 Fires Back: "We’re Ready. Are You?"

[Financial News] Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc., has issued a challenge to the top professional League of Legends (LoL) team. To be precise, it’s not Musk himself who will compete, but Grok 5, the artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by his company xAI.
On the 25th (local time), Musk posted on his X (formerly Twitter) account, saying, "I want to test whether Grok 5 can defeat the best human LoL team in 2026." Grok 5 is xAI’s next-generation AI model, expected to launch in the first quarter of next year.
League of Legends esports fans speculated that Musk’s challenge was directed at T1. T1 recently made history by winning the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) for the third consecutive time—a first in LoL esports.
Particular attention is on Lee Sang-hyeok (Faker) of T1, widely regarded as the greatest player in LoL history, and how he will perform against AI. Responding to fans’ excitement, T1 shared Musk’s post on social media, along with a video of Lee Sang-hyeok (Faker) making his signature 'shh' gesture, captioned, "We are ready. Are you?"

Musk’s challenge stems from his confidence in Grok 5.
He explained, "Grok 5 is designed to experiment and play any game on its own, as long as it has the game manual." While previous AIs relied on algorithms optimized for specific games, Grok 5 is said to be capable of understanding and playing a variety of games.
Musk also outlined several conditions for the AI vs. human LoL team match. First, Grok 5 will only perceive the game through the monitor, simulating normal human vision (20/20). Additionally, the challenge assumes human-level reaction time and click speed.
AI companies have previously challenged top human players in various fields, both to demonstrate their technological prowess and to identify areas for improvement.
The 2016 Go match in Seoul between Google’s AlphaGo and Lee Sedol drew worldwide attention. In 2019, before the launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI achieved a decisive victory over OG, the champions of The International (TI) 2018 Dota 2 tournament.
y27k@fnnews.com Seo Yoon-kyung Reporter