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 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 location.
“Flux, accessible by way of Grok, is a wonderful text-to-image generator, however additionally it is actually good at creating faux images of actual places 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 approach? It might be a good suggestion.”
In a report posted earlier as we speak, The Verge famous that Grok’s picture era capabilities seem to have minimal safeguards, permitting customers to create probably controversial content material. Based on 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, comparable to avoiding pornographic or excessively violent content material, these guidelines appear inconsistent in apply. Not like different main AI picture turbines, Grok doesn’t seem to refuse prompts involving actual individuals or add figuring out watermarks to its outputs.
Given what persons are producing to date—together with pictures 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 doubtless information a defamation or copyright swimsuit).
Individuals utilizing Grok’s picture generator to shock brings up an outdated query in AI at this level: Ought to misuse of an AI picture generator be the duty of the one who creates the immediate, the group that created the AI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 photographs? To date, there isn’t any 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 reasonable 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 signify 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 clever 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 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 not too long ago launched an early model of Grok-2 to the LMSYS Chatbot Area below 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 Area is a well-liked subjective vibemarking web site for AI fashions, however it’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.
Based on xAI, each new Grok fashions present enhancements over predecessor Grok-1.5 in areas like graduate-level science information, basic 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 leads to visible math reasoning and document-based query answering.
The fashions are actually accessible to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers by way 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 unbiased verification. This closed method stands in stark distinction to current 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 way of an enterprise API later this month. The corporate says this API will function 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 era apart, maybe Grok-2’s largest legal responsibility is its deep hyperlink to X, which provides it an inclination to drag inaccurate info from tweets. It’s kind of like in case you had a pal who insisted on checking the social media web site earlier than answering any of your questions, even when it wasn’t significantly 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.”
