What just happened? Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, recently launched version 1.0 of Grok's image and video generator, which it claims is the biggest upgrade yet. Users can now create longer videos at a significantly higher resolution and with clearer audio. As xAI's image generator continues to court controversy, the company recently released Grok's API and announced its acquisition by another Musk company, SpaceX.

Users on X can now prompt Grok to generate clips up to 10 seconds long and at resolutions up to 720p. xAI announced that users have created approximately 1.245 billion videos over the past 30 days. In the hours since the release of version 1.0, users have already begun posting videos showcasing its advancements.

Although Grok Imagine's clips only last 10 seconds, users have combined shots to create short films with visually consistent scenes and characters. Dogan Ural, xAI's creative ambassador, demonstrated this with a 50-second video in which an android wakes up, flies above a landscape, and plays a cello before a large audience.

Another user combined multiple AI tools to prompt a nearly one-minute-long cartoon showing a man spending a day at home sipping coffee and playing chess with himself. Meanwhile, Capcom's Oliver Campbell shared a clip that inserts a cartoon character into a high-speed, realistic scene.

xAI also attempted to demonstrate Grok's audio quality improvements with two clips containing expressive, voiced characters. However, the videos reveal that lip syncing remains a challenge for generative AI.

It remains unclear how the update will impact the controversial nature of Grok Imagine's output. When it gained the ability to create explicit images late last year, users almost immediately began generating inappropriate non-consensual images of women and children.

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According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Grok created approximately three million revealing pictures, including 23,000 that appeared to show children. Although X eventually introduced safeguards against creating sexualized images of real people, many users have reportedly bypassed the restrictions. The European Commission recently began investigating X over the image generator.

In related news, xAI also released Grok Imagine's API late last month. Internal benchmarks claim that the video generation toolchain outperforms Veo 3, Sora 2, and numerous others in effectiveness versus price.

Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, is acquiring the AI startup to form a vertically integrated enterprise that offers AI compute in low earth orbit. Although skeptics disagree, Musk believes that it will soon become more efficient to operate the technology outside of Earth's atmosphere.