X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, quietly added a new image generator to its Grok assistant this past Saturday. Then, it removed it. Now, it’s bringing it back — and officially announcing it.
The image generator, called Aurora, was developed by Musk’s AI company, xAI, and trained on billions of examples from the internet. In a blog post, xAI said that Aurora “excels at photorealistic rendering” and following text instructions, and can “take inspiration from or directly edit user-provided images.”
Aurora is now available on X through Grok in select countries and will roll out to all users within a week, xAI said. Support for editing existing images will come at a later date.
“Grok can now generate high-quality images across several domains where other image generation models often struggle,” xAI wrote. “It can render precise visual details of real-world entities, text, logos, and can create realistic portraits of humans.”
When TechCrunch tested Aurora last weekend, it appeared to have few restrictions, just like the first image generator X added to Grok in October. Accessible through the Grok tab on X’s mobile apps and the web, Aurora could 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 also wasn’t flawless, however. On Saturday, X users posted Aurora-generated images showing objects blending unnaturally together and people without fingers. (Hands are notoriously hard for image generators.)
