Elon Musk's X introduces a new image generator called Aurora.

X, the social network formerly known as Twitter and owned by Elon Musk, has incorporated a new image generator into its Grok assistant. However, this product disappeared from the view of some users just hours after its launch on Saturday. This new image generator, called Aurora, was introduced in a post that generated a variety of reactions, as it appears to have been developed without an evaluation or specific details about its process.

Like the first image generator X added to Grok in October, Aurora seems to have few restrictions. Users can access it through the Grok tab in the mobile apps and on the web version, allowing the creation of images of public domain characters and copyrighted figures, such as Mickey Mouse, without any hassle. However, results from quick tests showed that while the model avoided generating nude content, it did allow graphic images, such as a bloody representation of Donald Trump.

The origins of Aurora are somewhat unclear. Employees of xAI, Musk's AI startup that develops Grok and other AI-driven features for X, announced Aurora in posts on the platform. However, it was not detailed whether xAI independently trained Aurora, if it was based on another existing generator, or if it collaborated with a third party, as was the case with its first generator, Flux. In any case, at least one xAI employee mentioned having contributed to the fine-tuning of Aurora.

Regarding its performance, Aurora excels at creating photorealistic images, including landscapes and still lifes, although it is not infallible. Some X users shared images generated with Aurora that showed objects combining in unnatural ways and people depicted without fingers, as hands are known to pose a challenge for these generators.

The launch of Aurora comes after X's decision to offer Grok for free to all users, after previously restricting this feature to Premium subscribers for a cost of $8 per month. Now, free users can send up to 10 messages to Grok every two hours and generate up to 3 images per day. On the other hand, xAI has recently closed a $6 billion funding round and is working on a standalone app for Grok, in addition to being close to releasing a new model of Grok, the Grok 3.

However, it seems that Aurora has been temporarily removed after its brief availability.