Musk launches (then deletes) new image generator

Elon Musk launched a new image generator, called Aurora, for his X chatbot, Grok, on Saturday. But just one day later, it was gone.

According to users—who were quick enough to use the new image generator—it was very capable of producing photo-realistic images of landscapes and still lifes, although it did have trouble producing fingers (common for image generators) and did get a few objects wrong. But they also noted there were very few restrictions, meaning it would, quite happily, generate (potentially offensive) images of copyrighted, public figures—like Mickey Mouse, for example—which many image generators steer clear of.

This could be a reason why Musk took his new AI tool down, and subsequently explained that “this is our internal image generation system…still in beta, but it will improve fast.”

At this stage, it’s unknown if Musk’s AI start-up, xAI, built Aurora, if it’s just an extension of an existing image generator, or if he brought in a 3rd party to help build it. But it comes after Musk announced that Grok will now be free to use for all users (although ‘free’ users will be limited to sending just 10 messages to Grok a day and creating just 3 images) and he secured $6B in funding to develop a standalone app for Grok, and launch its next-generation: Grok 3.