Musk’s X launches new image generator, promptly takes it down

Over the weekend, X started rolling out a new image generator for its AI assistant, Grok. However, it immediately encountered some issues.

According to Techcrunch, which broke the story and briefly tried out Aurora, the generator appeared to have few restrictions and could generate images of public and copyrighted figures.

It stopped the creation of some nude images but was able to create graphic content such as “an image of a bloodied Trump,” showing that there aren’t enough guardrails on the platform.

Perhaps for these reasons, Aurora quickly became inaccessible to users soon after launch.

In a post, Elon Musk replied to one X user that the new image generator is “just the beta version, but it will improve very fast.”

X launched Aurora just a few days after it released a free Grok version for X users. Previously, it was available only to customers who paid $8 for Premium or $16 Premium Plus monthly.

However, the free version has limitations. It only allows ten messages in two hours and can analyze three messages a day.

X first launched the ability to generate images via its Grok model in August. This generator also had loose guardrails at launch, as users could create images of political figures using drugs or pointing guns.