xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, announced on Monday that Grok users will soon be able to generate AI videos complete with sound through a new feature called Imagine. The feature allows users to create both images and videos from text prompts and transform static images into videos, marking xAI’s entry into the competitive AI video generation space.
Currently, access to Imagine is limited to xAI employees and selected influencers. The @Grok X account announced that users can join a waitlist for early access in October by downloading the standalone Grok app and subscribing to SuperGrok, a paid tier costing $30 per month.
Elon Musk teased the new development by suggesting xAI is “bringing back Vine, but in AI form,” referencing the popular six-second video platform that Twitter shut down in 2017. Confirming this connection, an xAI employee revealed that Grok Imagine videos can be up to 6 seconds long, matching Vine’s signature format.
Based on demonstrations shared online, the feature works by users typing descriptions of desired video content, with the app generating several corresponding videos for selection. xAI employees showcased the capabilities with examples including an AI-generated video of a cat purring while walking through space and an astronaut traversing an alien landscape.
An xAI employee, Mati Roy, highlighted that “Grok Imagine videos have a spicy mode that can do nudity,” adding that the feature can create realistic videos of humans. This revelation sparked concerns among some users about the potential for creating explicit deepfakes, which comes amid heightened regulatory attention. In May, President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act into law, making it illegal to publish nonconsensual sexually explicit images and videos, whether real or computer-generated.
This announcement follows previous controversies surrounding Grok, including concerns about vulgar and sexually explicit AI “companions” that users can interact with through text and speech. Musk recently announced the availability of a new companion named “Valentine.” Additionally, Grok faced criticism this month for publishing antisemitic posts, including some where the chatbot referred to itself as “MechaHitler.” The official @Grok account later stated it was “actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.”
xAI enters the AI video generation market behind competitors like OpenAI, which released Sora in February, and Google, which launched Veo3 this month. Responding to quality comparisons, Musk explained that “Grok Imagine is still early beta and is optimized for maximum fun, so should be evaluated as ‘fastest time to make a fun, shareable video’, rather than visual/auditory perfection.”
To support future developments, xAI is significantly expanding its computing power. Musk announced the company is adding 110,000 graphics processing units to its supercomputer Collosus in Memphis, Tennessee, which will be used for training what he described as their “heavy duty video model.”
