X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, has added a new image generator to its Grok assistant. However, after going live for a few hours on Saturday, the product seemed to disappear for some users.
So this new @grok image generation called Aurora just shipped on a Saturday, what do we think folks?
Looks like trained by them, no evals or details, just, here you go, use the thing.
Just like the first image generator X added to Grok in October, this one, called Aurora, appears to have few restrictions.
Accessible through the Grok tab on X’s mobile apps and the web, Aurora can 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’s origins are a bit murky.
Staffers at xAI, Musk’s AI startup, which develops Grok and many of X’s AI-powered features, announced Aurora in posts on X early Saturday. But the posts didn’t reveal whether xAI trained Aurora itself, built on top of an existing image generator, or, as was the case with xAI’s first image generator, Flux, collaborated with a third party.
At least one xAI employee said they helped fine-tune Aurora, though. And Musk alluded to xAI having its own “image generation system” under development in August.
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In any case, Aurora seems to excel at photorealistic images, including images of landscapes and still lifes. But it’s not flawless. X users posted Aurora-generated images showing objects blending unnaturally together and people without fingers. (Hands are notoriously hard for image generators.)
The release of Aurora comes after X made Grok free for all users; previously, the chatbot was gated behind X’s $8-per-month Premium subscription. Free users can send up to 10 messages to Grok every two hours and generate up to 3 images per day.
In other X and xAI news this week, xAI closed a $6 billion funding round, is reportedly working on a standalone app for Grok, and may be on cusp of releasing its next-generation Grok model, Grok 3.
Just the beta version, but it will improve very fast
Kyle Wiggers was TechCrunch’s AI Editor until June 2025. His writing has appeared in VentureBeat and Digital Trends, as well as a range of gadget blogs including Android Police, Android Authority, Droid-Life, and XDA-Developers. He lives in Manhattan with his partner, a music therapist.
