X, the Elon Musk-owned social network formerly often known as Twitter, quietly added a brand new image generator to its Grok assistant last Saturday. Then it was removed. Now it's coming back – officially announce It.
The image generator, called Aurora, was developed by Musk's AI company xAI and trained using billions of examples from the Internet. In a blog post, xAI said Aurora “distinguished by photorealistic rendering” and follows text instructions and might “take inspiration from or edit images directly” provided by the user.
Aurora is now available in select countries through Grok on X and can be available to all users inside per week, xAI said. Support for editing existing images can be available at a later date.
“Grok can now generate high-quality images across multiple areas where other image generation models often struggle,” xAI wrote. “It can reproduce precise visual details of real objects, text and logos, and create realistic portraits of individuals.”
When TechCrunch tested Aurora last weekend, there gave the impression to be few limitations, identical to the primary image generator, X, which was added to Grok in October. Aurora was available via the Grok tab within the mobile apps of
In our short tests, the model fell in need of nude photos. But graphic content was not taboo.
However, Aurora wasn't flawless either. On Saturday, X users posted images generated by Aurora showing objects unnaturally merging into one another and folks without fingers. (Hands are notoriously hard on image generators.)
