On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s AI firm, xAI, introduced the beta launch of two new language fashions, Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, out there to subscribers of his social media platform, X (previously Twitter). The fashions are additionally linked to the not too long ago launched Flux image-synthesis mannequin, which permits X customers to create largely uncensored photorealistic photos that may be shared on the location.
“Flux, accessible by way of Grok, is a wonderful text-to-image generator, however it is usually actually good at creating pretend images of actual areas and folks, and sending them proper to Twitter,” wrote frequent AI commentator Ethan Mollick on X. “Does anybody know if they’re watermarking these in any means? It might be a good suggestion.”
In a report posted earlier at this time, The Verge famous that Grok’s image-generation capabilities seem to have minimal safeguards, permitting customers to create probably controversial content material. In accordance with their testing, when prompted, Grok produced photos depicting political figures in compromising conditions, copyrighted characters, and scenes of violence.
The Verge discovered that whereas Grok claims to have sure limitations, corresponding to avoiding pornographic or excessively violent content material, these guidelines appear inconsistent in follow. Not like different main AI picture mills, Grok doesn’t seem to refuse prompts involving actual folks or add figuring out watermarks to its outputs.
Given what individuals are producing to this point—together with photos of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris kissing or giving a thumbs-up on the way in which to the Twin Towers in an obvious 9/11 assault—the unrestricted outputs might not final for lengthy. However then once more, Elon Musk has made a giant deal out of “freedom of speech” on his platform, so maybe the potential will stay (till somebody possible recordsdata a defamation or copyright swimsuit).
Folks utilizing Grok’s picture generator for shock worth brings up an previous query in AI at this level: Ought to misuse of an AI picture generator be the duty of the one who creates the immediate, the group that created the AI mannequin, or the platform that hosts the pictures? Thus far, there isn’t any 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 life like picture deepfakes.
On Thursday morning, Musk weighed in on folks 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 photos with out additional content material filters, Musk wrote, “We have now our personal picture era system underneath growth, but it surely’s a number of months away, so this appeared like an excellent intermediate step for folks to have some enjoyable.”
With Grok-2, the GPT-4 ceiling nonetheless holds
Wanting past photos, in a launch weblog, xAI claims that Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini symbolize important developments in capabilities, with Grok-2 supposedly outperforming some main opponents in latest benchmarks and what we name “vibemarks.” It is at all times smart to method these claims with a dose of skepticism, however it seems that the “GPT-4 class” of AI language fashions (these with comparable functionality to OpenAI’s mannequin) has grown bigger, however the GPT-4 barrier has not but been smashed.
“There at the moment are 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. “The entire labs are saying there may be room left for continued big enhancements, however we haven’t seen any fashions actually leap above GPT-4… but.”
xAI says it not too long ago launched an early model of Grok-2 to the LMSYS Chatbot Enviornment underneath the identify “sus-column-r,” the place it reportedly achieved a better general Elo rating than fashions like Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4 Turbo. Chatbot Enviornment is a well-liked subjective vibemarking web site for AI fashions, but it surely has been the topic of controversy not too long ago when folks disagreed with OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini putting so extremely within the rankings.
In accordance with xAI, each new Grok fashions present enhancements over predecessor Grok-1.5 in areas like graduate-level science information, common information, 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 at the moment are out there to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers by way of an up to date app interface. Not like a few of its opponents within the open-weights house, xAI is not releasing the mannequin weights for obtain or unbiased verification. This closed method stands in stark distinction to latest strikes by Meta, which not too long ago launched its Llama 3.1 405B mannequin for anybody to obtain and run regionally.
xAI plans to launch each fashions by way of an enterprise API later this month. The corporate says this API will characteristic multi-region deployment choices and safety measures, like obligatory 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 supplies it a bent to tug inaccurate info from tweets. It’s kind of like if you happen to 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 as if a stable 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.
