What you need to know
- Elon Musk’s X launched Grok 2 with reasoning and image generation capabilities.
- The image generation capability has been received with a cocktail of emotions, with the vast majority touting its uncensored nature.
- Multiple deepfake images generated using Grok have surfaced online featuring prominent politicians and public figures in compromising situations.
The emergence of generative AI has stirred controversy among interested parties, with the main issue centered on privacy and security. Chatbots like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT are great at generating images based on text prompts.
Interestingly, professionals in the built environment, including architects and interior designers, could lose their jobs to AI since it’s increasingly becoming better at generating sophisticated structural designs. However, a separate report disclosed that these AI tools fail at simple tasks like creating a plain white image.
The ability to generate images using AI has raised concern among artists, especially after explicit photos of pop star Taylor Swift surfaced online. Image Creator by Designer’s capabilities got a significant boost after DALL-E 3 image generation technology was integrated into the tool. However, the hype was short-lived after Microsoft lobotomized the tool’s capabilities to avoid further controversy.
This caused a ripple effect across rival models, limiting their capabilities to simple and generic images—not Grok-2, though. Shortly after the model launched, users quickly moved to X and referred to it as “the most based and uncensored model of its class yet.” Users also used the opportunity to praise Elon Musk for “ensuring freedom of speech for humans and machines alike with @x + @xai.”
Grok is the most fun AI in the world! https://t.co/5ZS2iDkwimAugust 14, 2024
Users are seemingly enjoying the freedom Grok 2’s image generation capabilities offer. There’s no cap to what you can prompt the AI model to generate. X partnered with Black Forest Labs, allowing Grok 2 to leverage Flux’s image-generating capabilities.
Grok features a fun mode that allows users to tap their creative juices at an optimum level. To this end, it’s unclear what the general opinion is about the tool’s new image-generation capabilities. The tool has seemingly been received with a cocktail of emotions, with the vast majority touting its unlimited capabilities. Some users have raised concerns about the tool spreading misinformation, ultimately causing harm.
Multiple deepfake images of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are already making rounds across social media. And while it’s easy to identify them as AI-generated images, they pose a significant threat to the forthcoming elections, placing the involved parties in compromising situations like the 9/11 attacks.
More problems abound for X
Grok is increasingly becoming more like Microsoft and OpenAI’s flagship AI-powered chatbots, though it’s seemingly the new kid on the block. Billionaire and X owner Musk has laid out ambitious plans for the chatbot and says It will be “the most powerful AI by every metric by December.” Musk highlighted that the chatbot is being trained by the world’s most powerful AI cluster.
The chatbot has already stumbled onto some critical setbacks. First, it was recently spotted spreading misinformation about the forthcoming US Presidential election, which raised concern among regulators.
X has also quietly rolled out a new setting that grants the chatbot access to a user’s data by default for training. When regulators raised the issue to X, the company reportedly shoulder-shrugged the complaints. X has made it difficult to disable the feature, as it’s limited to the web app.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) could fine X up to 4% of its global annual turnover if the platform can’t establish a legal basis for using users’ data to train its chatbot without their consent.
