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 just lately launched Flux image-synthesis mannequin, which permits X customers to create largely uncensored photorealistic photos that may be shared on the positioning.
“Flux, accessible via Grok, is a wonderful text-to-image generator, however it’s also actually good at creating faux pictures 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 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. Based on 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, comparable to avoiding pornographic or excessively violent content material, these guidelines appear inconsistent in observe. In contrast to 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 thus far—together with photos 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 might 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 information a defamation or copyright go well with).
Folks utilizing Grok’s picture generator for shock worth brings up an outdated query in AI at this level: Ought to misuse of an AI picture generator be the duty of the one that creates the immediate, the group that created the AI mannequin, or the platform that hosts the photographs? To date, there is no such thing as a clear consensus, and the scenario 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 life like 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 photos with out additional content material filters, Musk wrote, “Now we have our personal picture era system underneath growth, however it’s a number of months away, so this appeared like intermediate step for individuals to have some enjoyable.”
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 vital developments in capabilities, with Grok-2 supposedly outperforming some main opponents in latest 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. “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 just lately launched an early model of Grok-2 to the LMSYS Chatbot Area underneath the identify “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, however it has been the topic of controversy just lately 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, 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 are actually out there to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers via an up to date app interface. In contrast to 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 just lately launched its Llama 3.1 405B mannequin for anybody to obtain and run regionally.
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 supplies it an inclination to drag inaccurate info from tweets. It’s kind of like when you had a pal 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 will 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.”
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.
