Elon Musk's xAI recently announced the launch of its Application Programming Interface (API), enabling third-party developers to access and build applications and features powered by xAI's Grok large language model. The xAI API allows developers to access the Grok-2 and Grok-2mini models and supports the generation of relaxed images using Black Forest Labs' Flux.1 diffusion model.
The xAI API offers a web-based console for creating API keys, exploring endpoints, and integrating models into applications. It supports REST, gRPC, and SDK, and is compatible with other AI services like OpenAI, enabling smooth integration with existing systems.
The pricing for the xAI API is $5 per 1 million input tokens and $15 per output, higher than OpenAI's GPT-4o model pricing. However, the xAI API provides more features, including text and code generation, visual analysis and image generation, function calls, and more.
Toby Pohlen, a founding member of xAI, stated that the xAI API includes features such as a usage browser, simplified team management, enhanced security, and more. To start using the xAI API, developers must register through the xAI console, join their team, and configure billing.
The official release of the xAI API supports third-party development, challenging other AI services like OpenAI. Whether more developers will choose to use the xAI API remains to be seen.