Elon Musk's social network X (formerly Twitter) recently launched a new image generator called Aurora within its Grok assistant. Although Aurora went live on Saturday, some users found the feature inaccessible just a few hours later.
The purpose of Aurora seems to be to create photo-realistic images. Users can access Aurora for image generation through the Grok tab in the mobile app and website. Similar to the first image generator launched by X in October, there seem to be few restrictions on using Aurora. Users are able to generate images of public and copyrighted characters, including Mickey Mouse, without any warnings. In our tests, Aurora did not generate nude images, but it did not restrict images like "bloody Trump."
The source of Aurora remains unclear. Some employees from Musk's AI company (xAI), which is responsible for Grok and many AI features on X, announced Aurora's launch on social media but did not disclose whether the model was independently trained by xAI, built on existing image generators, or developed in collaboration with third parties.
According to an xAI employee, they were involved in fine-tuning Aurora. Additionally, Musk mentioned in August that xAI was developing an internal "image generation system."
Aurora performs well in generating landscapes and still-life images, but it also has some shortcomings. Users have posted images generated by Aurora on social media, showing some objects unnaturally merging together and issues like missing fingers in portraits (which is often difficult to handle in hand image generation).
The release of Aurora coincides with X opening the Grok feature to all users for free; previously, this feature was limited to users with a premium subscription costing $8 per month. Now, free users can send up to 10 messages to Grok every two hours and generate up to 3 images daily.
Additionally, xAI recently completed a $6 billion funding round and is developing a standalone Grok application, with the next-generation Grok model—Grok3—potentially on the way.
Key Points:
🌟 New image generator Aurora launched, allowing users to create various images.
🚫 Some users were unable to access the feature within hours of its launch.
💰 X social platform opens Grok feature to all users.
