On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s AI firm, xAI, introduced the beta launch of two new language fashions, Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, accessible to subscribers of his social media platform, X (previously Twitter). The fashions are additionally linked to the just lately launched Flux image-synthesis mannequin, which permits X customers to create largely uncensored photorealistic photographs that may be shared on the location.
“Flux, accessible via Grok, is a wonderful text-to-image generator, however additionally it is actually good at creating pretend images of actual places and other people, and sending them proper to Twitter,” wrote frequent AI commentator Ethan Mollick on X. “Does anybody know if they’re watermarking these in any manner? It will be a good suggestion.”
In a report posted earlier as we speak, The Verge famous that Grok’s image-generation capabilities seem to have minimal safeguards, permitting customers to create probably controversial content material. In line with their testing, when prompted, Grok produced photographs depicting political figures in compromising conditions, copyrighted characters, and scenes of violence.
The Verge discovered that whereas Grok claims to have sure limitations, reminiscent of avoiding pornographic or excessively violent content material, these guidelines appear inconsistent in observe. Not like different main AI picture mills, Grok doesn’t seem to refuse prompts involving actual individuals or add figuring out watermarks to its outputs.
Given what individuals are producing thus far—together with photographs of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris kissing or giving a thumbs-up on the best way to the Twin Towers in an obvious 9/11 assault—the unrestricted outputs could not final for lengthy. However then once more, Elon Musk has made an enormous deal out of “freedom of speech” on his platform, so maybe the potential will stay (till somebody probably recordsdata a defamation or copyright swimsuit).
Individuals utilizing Grok’s picture generator for shock worth brings up an outdated query in AI at this level: Ought to misuse of an AI picture generator be the accountability of the one who creates the immediate, the group that created the AI mannequin, or the platform that hosts the pictures? Up to now, there is no such thing as a clear consensus, and the state of affairs has but to be resolved legally, though a brand new proposed US regulation referred to as the NO FAKES Act would presumably maintain X answerable for the creation of real looking picture deepfakes.
On Thursday morning, Musk weighed in on individuals utilizing the AI picture generator on X. In response to an open query from Mollick about why xAI selected to make use of Flux to permit customers to generate photographs with out additional content material filters, Musk wrote, “Now we have our personal picture era system underneath improvement, nevertheless it’s a number of months away, so this appeared like an excellent intermediate step for individuals to have some enjoyable.”
With Grok-2, the GPT-4 ceiling nonetheless holds
Wanting past photographs, in a launch weblog, xAI claims that Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini symbolize vital developments in capabilities, with Grok-2 supposedly outperforming some main rivals in current benchmarks and what we name “vibemarks.” It is all the time sensible to strategy these claims with a dose of skepticism, however it seems that the “GPT-4 class” of AI language fashions (these with related functionality to OpenAI’s mannequin) has grown bigger, however the GPT-4 barrier has not but been smashed.
“There are actually 5 GPT-4 class fashions: GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, Gemini 1.5, Llama 3.1, and now Grok 2,” wrote Ethan Mollick on X. “All the labs are saying there’s room left for continued big enhancements, however we haven’t seen any fashions actually leap above GPT-4… but.”
xAI says it just lately launched an early model of Grok-2 to the LMSYS Chatbot Area underneath the title “sus-column-r,” the place it reportedly achieved the next general Elo rating than fashions like Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4 Turbo. Chatbot Area is a well-liked subjective vibemarking web site for AI fashions, nevertheless it has been the topic of controversy just lately when individuals disagreed with OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini inserting so extremely within the rankings.
In line with xAI, each new Grok fashions present enhancements over predecessor Grok-1.5 in areas like graduate-level science data, basic data, and math problem-solving in benchmarks which have equally proved controversial. The corporate additionally highlighted Grok-2’s efficiency on visible duties, claiming state-of-the-art ends in visible math reasoning and document-based query answering.
The fashions are actually accessible to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers via an up to date app interface. Not like a few of its rivals within the open-weights house, xAI is not releasing the mannequin weights for obtain or impartial verification. This closed strategy stands in stark distinction to current strikes by Meta, which just lately launched its Llama 3.1 405B mannequin for anybody to obtain and run domestically.
xAI plans to launch each fashions via an enterprise API later this month. The corporate says this API will characteristic multi-region deployment choices and safety measures, like necessary multifactor authentication. Particulars on pricing, utilization limits, or data-handling insurance policies haven’t but been introduced.
Photorealistic picture era apart, maybe Grok-2’s largest legal responsibility is its deep hyperlink to X, which provides it an inclination to tug inaccurate data from tweets. It’s kind of like for those who had a buddy who insisted on checking the social media web site earlier than answering any of your questions, even when it wasn’t notably related.
As Mollick identified on X, this shut hyperlink may be annoying: “I solely have entry to Grok 2 mini proper now, and it looks like a strong mannequin, however usually appears ill-served by its RAG connection to Twitter,” he wrote. “The mannequin is fed outcomes from Twitter that appear irrelevant to the immediate, after which desperately tries to attach them into one thing coherent.”
This story was up to date at 9:30 AM on August 15, 2024 to incorporate a quote from Elon Musk about Grok’s picture generator.
