X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has introduced a new image generator called Aurora, integrated with its Grok AI assistant. The feature was briefly available on Saturday but reportedly disappeared for some users after a few hours.
Aurora was announced by staff from xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, which develops Grok and other AI-driven features for X. However, details about whether Aurora was entirely developed in-house, built on existing models, or created in collaboration with a third party remain unclear. Notably, xAI’s earlier image generator, Flux, involved external partnerships.
According to posts on X, at least one xAI employee contributed to fine-tuning Aurora. Musk described it as an “internal image generation system” still in beta but noted its rapid improvement. Early impressions highlight Aurora’s strength in creating photorealistic landscapes and still-life images, although some users reported imperfections, such as unnatural object blending and issues with generating human hands—a common challenge for image generators.
Aurora’s debut comes after X made its Grok AI assistant free for all users. Previously limited to Premium subscribers paying $8 per month, Grok now allows free users to send up to 10 messages every two hours and generate up to three images per day.
This week has been busy for xAI and X. xAI announced the closure of a $6 billion funding round, reportedly working on a standalone app for Grok, and may soon release its next-generation AI model, Grok 3. Aurora’s addition signals Musk’s commitment to expanding X’s capabilities, further integrating AI tools into the platform’s ecosystem.
