Grok has been reborn — with AI image generation.
The second version of the AI chatbot integrated into X (formerly Twitter), Grok-2 is now being made available in beta to users who pay for X Premium and Premium+. The slowly ingrained AI model, much touted by X owner Elon Musk, comes in two versions: Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, the latter being described as “our small but capable model that offers a balance between speed and answer quality.”
In a post on its website, Musk’s AI company xAI says Grok-2 has been developed with startup Black Forest Labs to incorporate its FLUX.1 model, which specifically creates AI-generated images. As paying users already with early access to Grok-2 have discovered, the image generator will create images of real people, which raises concerns for artists and copyright, and also doctored imagery — something Musk’s X is actively promoting.
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Early testers have shared some of their Grok-2 creations on X:
Mashable Light Speed
Grok can reportedly now generate memes, which have middling results for early testers.
xAI also said Grok-2 had been tested on the LMSYS leaderboard — a system for testing large language models (LLMs) — and claimed “it is outperforming both Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4-Turbo” at the time of writing.
Grok launched in December 2023 after Musk launched xAI in July 2023. And the AI chatbot hasn’t been without controversy. In April, the AI chatbot generated a shocking fake headline reading, “Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles.” The headline was then promoted on the platform’s Explore trending news section.
In July, users also discovered X is using your posts to train Grok — you can opt out of this now-default setting.
Features like Grok appear a means to entice users to pay for a monthly $16 Premium+ plan (now fully ad-free) or $8 X Premium plan. X / Twitter’s user base has stopped growing under Musk — stares at possible reasons including blatant disinformation, hate speech, conspiracy theories, “social media piracy,” and Musk’s public political endorsements. But Musk has other distractions, namely the multiple ad boycotts and lawsuits X is facing.