On Saturday, a new image generator named Aurora was made available to some Grok users, many of whom shared the tool’s results on X, touting the images’ photorealism; however, by Sunday afternoon, Aurora had disappeared. Initially, it appeared as an option in Grok’s model selection menu under “Grok 2 + Aurora (beta),” but it has since been replaced by “Grok 2 + Flux (beta).” It seems Aurora might have been released to the public earlier than planned. Responding to a tweet from a user who posted images of Tesla’s Cybertruck generated with Aurora, Elon Musk commented, “This is our internal image generation system. Still in beta, but it will improve fast.”
This event follows shortly after X announced that Grok 2 is now free to use, albeit with limitations for non-paying users. Grok’s previous image generator has been criticized for lacking adequate restrictions around the types of content it can create, including offensive images of politicians and celebrities. Aurora appears to be similar in this respect. TechCrunch experimented with Aurora before it was removed and noted that it accepted a prompt to generate “an image of a bloodied [Donald] Trump.”
Additionally, users on X shared examples of Aurora generating images of public figures and copyrighted characters, including multiple images of Sam Altman and Elon Musk, as well as an image of Luigi and Mickey Mouse in a boxing match. However, according to TechCrunch, Aurora would not create nude images, which is noteworthy.
