Elon Musk and his xAI team are making a big push to get people using its latest Grok elements, with its Grok “Imagine” video generation option now free to use in the U.S. (for a limited time), while X has also added the capacity to animate images with Grok in-stream.
First off, on Imagine, Grok’s latest text-to-video functionality, which it launched to paying X Premium and Grok subscribers last week.
xAI is making a big promotional push for the new function in the app, with Elon himself sharing various Grok-generated videos.
And as noted, Elon has also announced that U.S. users can try the function for free, for a limited time, though it will remain a paid add-on option.
xAI says that Imagine is the fastest and most fun video generator available, while Elon’s also noted that the best Imagine video creations will soon get their own dedicated feed in the app.
Which is what he meant when he said that X was bringing back Vine “in AI form” a few weeks back. To be clear, X is not bringing back Vine, but it is looking to showcase Grok text-to-video generations.
In addition to this, X has also added a new “Make video with Grok” option on still images in the app:
So you’ll also be able to use Grok to animate still images, providing another option for xAI’s evolving video generation tools.
Instagram’s developing the same image-to-video functionality for its “Edits” video editing app, while TikTok’s variation, which it launched in selected markets in May, is called “AI Alive,” and YouTube also rolled out the same a few weeks back.
So functionally, this is not new, but having it easily accessible within the X app could prompt a lot of people to try it out, and see how Grok thinks images would evolve from their static state.
X is also working to bring Grok Imagine to the web:
While on a related front, Elon has also discussed Grok’s evolving video game creation engine, which will soon make it easier to create games that you can play, through a simplified building process.
xAI has also upgraded Grok 4’s PDF processing abilities:
“Grok can now seamlessly handle massive PDFs – hundreds of pages and beyond. Grok also has a better understanding of the PDF content through sharper recognition capabilities.”
While xAI has also launched its male companion app, called Valentine.
So there’s a range of AI-powered updates coming to X, primarily to paying users, though some are also available to free users.
But the push, of course, is to get more people paying for X, in order to help fund the ongoing development of its AI systems, and eventually make money from them.
It’s unclear exactly how xAI plans to generate big money from its AI tools, but with government contracts, and evolving subscription offerings, it could have a pathway to generating significant revenue, if it can get enough interest.
Will text-to-video be as big of a deal to users as Elon and Co. hope?
