xAI has introduced Aurora, a new image generation model for its Grok chatbot on X, which creates highly realistic images of real people, marking a significant advancement in AI-generated visuals. Some Employees at the Elon Musk-owned AI company, announced Aurora in posts on X early Saturday.
Currently, there appear to be few restrictions on the types of images users can generate, including political figures, copyrighted characters, and potentially sensitive content.
Aurora builds upon xAI’s previous image generation capabilities introduced in October, which were powered by the Flux 1 model from Black Forest Labs. Accessible through the Grok tab on X, the xAI chatbot has undergone significant upgrades, including the launch of Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, which offer improved performance and new features.
xAI recently closed a $6 billion funding round that could value the comapny at $50 billion. The company is reportedly working on a standalone app for Grok, as it races to catch up with, and potentially beat rivals like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
The introduction of Aurora comes after X made Grok free for all users; previously, the chatbot was gated behind X’s $8-per-month Premium subscription. Currently free users can send up to 10 messages to Grok every two hours and generate up to 3 images per day.