American entrepreneur Elon Musk has issued a challenge to the best League of Legends players to face against the latest version of his AI programme, Grok 5.
In a post that has attracted over 6m views on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the challenge has made fans curious about which is the best at the MOBA game: man or machine?
Elon Musk stated that he wished to hold the challenge sometime in 2026, while also outlining a few conditions for Grok 5 to keep the showdown fair. The AI will only be able to look at a monitor through a camera, to see no more than ‘a person with 20/20 vision’. Additionally, Grok 5’s reaction latency and click rate will be ‘no faster’ than a human.
Notable names within the League of Legends community have expressed interest in making this challenge a reality. Notably, Worlds 2025 champion T1 responded to the entrepreneur’s idea.
Eugene ‘Pobelter‘ Park, former professional player and current League of Legends streamer, said: “Would love to help and offer insight as a former league pro. I thought AI vs Dota 2 was really interesting and always wanted to see it versus League.”
As Pobelter noted, this will not be the first time that professional players have faced off against AI. As reported by Vice, pro players in the Dota 2 scene played two consecutive games against an AI team developed by OpenAI, a tech non-profit sponsored by Elon Musk.
In response to the challenge, the idea of StarCraft professional players facing against AI was also proposed, which Elon Musk appeared to be on board with.
AI in Esports
In the past year, AI has steadily expanded its presence in the esports scene, in League of Legends and beyond.
Various esports organisations, including 100 Thieves, Cloud9, Dignitas and Team Heretics have partnered with cloud infrastructure provider Theta Network to develop AI agents for their social platforms.
AI has also extended beyond the professional scene to improve the skills of casual players. European esports organisation GIANTX launched iTero, an AI-powered training tool for League of Legends that aims to improve a player’s performance. Earlier this year, peripheral giant Razer also unveiled an AI coach called Project AVA at CES 2025.
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