Elon Musk gives a glimpse at xAI's Grok chatbot
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Elon Musk's X gains a new image generator, Aurora | TechCrunch
X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, has added a new image generator to its Grok assistant called Aurora.
techcrunch.com
Elon Musk’s X gains a new image generator, Aurora
Kyle Wiggers
1:00 PM PST · December 7, 2024
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/07/elon-musks-x-gains-a-new-image-generator-aurora/#comments https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/07/elon-musks-x-gains-a-new-image-generator-aurora/
X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, has added a new image generator to its Grok assistant. However, after going live for a few hours on Saturday, the product seemed to disappear for some users.
So this new @grok image generation called Aurora just shipped on a Saturday, what do we think folks?
Looks like trained by them, no evals or details, just, here you go, use the thing.
Seems focused on photo realism
— Alex Volkov (Thursd/AI) (@altryne) December 7, 2024x.com
t.co
Just like the first image generator X added to Grok in October, this one, called Aurora, appears to have few restrictions.
Accessible through the Grok tab on X’s mobile apps and the web, Aurora can generate images of public and copyrighted figures, like Mickey Mouse, without complaint. The model stopped short of nudes in our brief tests, but graphic content, like “an image of a bloodied [Donald] Trump,” wasn’t off limits.
Aurora’s origins are a bit murky.
Staffers at xAI, Musk’s AI startup, which develops Grok and many of X’s AI-powered features, announced Aurora in posts on X early Saturday. But the posts didn’t reveal whether xAI trained Aurora itself, built on top of an existing image generator, or, as was the case with xAI’s first image generator, Flux, collaborated with a third party.
At least one xAI employee said they helped fine-tune Aurora, though. And Musk alluded to xAI having its own “image generation system” under development in August.
“This is our internal image generation system,” Musk wrote Saturday in a post on X. “Still in beta, but it will improve fast.”
Behold my images using the new Grok @grok image generator Aurora:
1. Ray Romano and @AdamSandler on a sitcom set pic.twitter.com/2V491RdjMF
— Matt (@EnsoMatt) December 7, 2024
In any case, Aurora seems to excel at photorealistic images, including images of landscapes and still lifes. But it’s not flawless. X users posted Aurora-generated images showing objects blending unnaturally together and people without fingers. (Hands are notoriously hard for image generators.)
The release of Aurora comes after X made Grok free for all users; previously, the chatbot was gated behind X’s $8-per-month Premium subscription. Free users can send up to 10 messages to Grok every two hours and generate up to 3 images per day.
In other X and xAI news this week, xAI closed a $6 billion funding round, is reportedly working on a standalone app for Grok, and may be on cusp of releasing its next-generation Grok model, Grok 3.
This post has been updated to reflect that Aurora seems to have been taken down.
Grok is now free for all X users | TechCrunch
The AI chatbot within X, Grok, is now free for all users - but with some limits.
techcrunch.com
Posted:
6:14 PM PST · December 6, 2024
Grok is now free for all X users
X users no longer need to pay for X Premium to use the service’s AI chatbot, Grok. Instead, X is allowing users 10 free prompts every 2 hours.
This was reported by The Verge, citing X users who noticed the update. X first began trialing a free version of Grok in certain countries like New Zealand, TechCrunch reported last month.
Users can also generate 10 images for free every 2 hours. However, they are restricted to analyzing 3 images per day, according to an X post. Anything more requires subscribing.
This gives Grok a freemium model similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Previously, Grok was only available to X Premium members for a price starting at $8 a month or $84 a year.
xAI, the AI company behind Grok, just raised $6 billion per an SEC filing, bringing its total funding to $12 billion.
