• On Saturday, some users of Elon Musk’s X saw Grok running a new image generator called Aurora.
• The new model appears to have more photorealistic generations than the previous Flux model.
• Aurora has not been widely released, although there are reportedly few restrictions on development.

On Saturday, some users reported Elon Musks

While Aurora wasn’t yet widely available – and some users who later claimed to have access to it said their Grok had reverted to its older model, Flux, the quick look at the newer model offered a first look at what it’s like Compared to its predecessor and its competitors.

Aurora’s detailed generations represent a notable improvement over Grok’s Flux model and appear to rival the output of other models such as OpenAI’s DALL·E 3.

TechCrunch reported that Aurora’s beta version – like Flux’s – appears to have few creative limitations, and in short tests it produced images of copyrighted characters such as Mickey Mouse and public figures, including a depiction of a “bloodied Donald Trump”, but “no nudes”. In testing by Business Insider, Grok’s version of Flux also generated images of Mickey Mouse, but refused to produce violent images.

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Although the images were praised online for their quality and realism, there were still clues that they were AI-generated, such as the unusual proportions of the arms and hands and the uncanny smoothness of some facial and skin features.

“X AI casually releases one of the best image models on a Saturday at 2am… @xai You’re all built differently,” says Guillaume Verdon, the founder of AI startup Extropic and the effective accelerationism movement that supports AI growth Development without guardrails or regulation, wrote in a post tagged xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company that created Grok.

Musk responded to Verdo, who refers to himself online as Based Beff Jezos, by saying: “Just the beta version, but it will improve very quickly.”

Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.