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 picture synthesis mannequin, which permits X customers to create largely uncensored photorealistic pictures that may be shared on the positioning.
“Flux, accessible by means of Grok, is a superb text-to-image generator, however additionally it is actually good at creating pretend pictures 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 method? It might be a good suggestion.”
In a report posted earlier at the moment, The Verge famous that Grok’s picture technology capabilities seem to have minimal safeguards, permitting customers to create doubtlessly controversial content material. In accordance with their testing, Grok produced pictures depicting political figures in compromising conditions, copyrighted characters, and scenes of violence when prompted.
The Verge discovered that whereas Grok claims to have sure limitations, akin to 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 persons are producing up to now—together with pictures 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 aptitude will stay (till somebody probably information a defamation or copyright go well with).
Folks utilizing Grok’s picture generator to shock brings up an previous query in AI at this level: Ought to misuse of an AI picture generator be the accountability of the one that creates the immediate, the group that created the AI mannequin, or the platform that hosts the pictures? Thus far, 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 legislation known as the NO FAKES act would presumably maintain X answerable for the creation of sensible picture deepfakes.
With Grok-2, the GPT-4 ceiling nonetheless holds
Wanting past pictures, 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 rivals in latest benchmarks and what we name “vibemarks.” It is at all times clever to strategy 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 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. “The entire 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 not too long ago launched an early model of Grok-2 to the LMSYS Chatbot Enviornment beneath 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 Enviornment is a well-liked subjective vibemarking web site for AI fashions, but it surely’s been the topic of controversy not too long ago when individuals 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 data, normal 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 leads to visible math reasoning and document-based query answering.
The fashions are actually out there to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers by means of 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 latest strikes by Meta, which not too long ago launched its Llama 3.1 405B mannequin for anybody to obtain and run domestically.
xAI plans to launch each fashions by means of 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 knowledge dealing with insurance policies haven’t but been introduced.
Photorealistic picture technology apart, maybe Grok-2’s greatest legal responsibility is its deep hyperlink to X, which provides it a bent to tug inaccurate data from tweets. It’s kind of like in the event you 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 might be annoying: “I solely have entry to Grok 2 mini proper now, and it looks as if a stable mannequin, however typically 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.”
