A new image generator called Aurora briefly opened for testing for some Grok users, and the tool’s results shared on X appeared far more realistic than X’s previous image generators. It was a brief debut, though. By Sunday afternoon, Aurora was gone. For a short time, there was a Grok 2 + Aurora (beta) option in Grok’s model selection menu, which is now replaced by Grok 2 + Flux (beta). It looks like Aurora may have gone public before it was meant to.
Grok’s previous image generator was called out for lacking certain restrictions on the content it can produce, like offensive images of politicians and celebrities. TechCrunch was able to generate an image of “a bloodied [Donald] Trump” — the kind of thing AI image generators are restricted from creating. In that brief period, paying Grok users leaped at the chance to put Adam Sandler and Ray Romano in photos together, or Captain Picard in a Christmas hat. Sure. Why not?
— Mat Smith
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