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 photos that may be shared on the location.
“Flux, accessible by means of Grok, is a superb text-to-image generator, however it is usually 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 means? It could be a good suggestion.”
In a report posted earlier right this moment, The Verge famous that Grok’s picture technology capabilities seem to have minimal safeguards, permitting customers to create probably controversial content material. In line with their testing, Grok produced photos 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, equivalent to avoiding pornographic or excessively violent content material, these guidelines appear inconsistent in follow. Not like different main AI picture turbines, 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 probably recordsdata 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 photographs? 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 legislation referred to as the NO FAKES act would presumably maintain X responsible for the creation of real looking picture deepfakes.
With Grok-2, the GPT-4 ceiling nonetheless holds
Trying past photos, in a launch weblog, xAI claims that Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini characterize 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 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 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 large enhancements, however we haven’t seen any fashions really 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 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, however it’s 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 line with xAI, each new Grok fashions present enhancements over predecessor Grok-1.5 in areas like graduate-level science information, normal 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 at the moment are accessible to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers by means 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 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 function multi-region deployment choices and safety measures like necessary multifactor authentication. Particulars on pricing, utilization limits, or information 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 supplies it a bent to tug inaccurate data from tweets. It’s kind of like in case you had a good friend who insisted on checking the social media website 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 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.”