xAI, the startup owned by Elon Musk, has recently released Grok-2.

I am Grok. No, it’s not a spinoff of Groot. “Grok” is actually a valid English word coined from a science fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”. Grok means ‘to fully understand something’. So when you grok something, you get it. Ok, English lesson over, but nowhere I could find any evidence where Elon Musk says that’s how it is he came up with this name. Maybe, he meant something else or just picked up a random word.  

After the first version Grok launched in late 2023, and a few upgrades later, this new beta version released few days back comes includes image generation capabilities thanks to the Flux model owned by Black Forest Labs.

There have been a lot of generated images circulating online, featuring political leaders, especially ones having Kamala Harris and Trump, as the upcoming November U.S. election heats up. Copyrighted products and brands are not spared either, and sensitive issues are also taken light heartedly.

The advantage of Grok, is that it has access to a vast data collection because of X. However, we can’t say if it is boon or a bane. Remember, the Reddit answers that gave incorrect answers for Gemini.

The images generated seems to be of good quality, though. I haven’t tried it, but users online have not found issues on the capabilities of the model. It seems pretty decent in generating close to accurate human depictions. However, the concerning thing is the messages it gives. As usual, there would be users, who are ready to try weird and senseless prompts, and then share it with the world. The only way to curb this would be to restrict the types of prompts allowed. Unlike, Google and OpenAI, Musk doesn’t seem to be overly concerned about the generated images. In contrast, he says it’s fun. Last year, when Grok was released, Musk mocked Sam Altman’s concerns about “woke” AI. Altman mentioned how deadly it was to train models to be woke. Musk, highlighted his is “anti-woke”. The end-result we have is an AI that could create images with fewer restrictions.

Oh and I should mention — it is not accessible to free users. Yeah, only the premium users have the privilege to try out prompts. There’s also a mini version too released along with Grok-2, which seems to be a scaled-down version meant to give faster results.

Let’s wait and watch.

Meanwhile, here are few generated images by Grok-2:

Feature Images by Heisenberg Media and images generated by users – Sinsation, Shitpost 2077, Adriano