• X quietly released image generation for Grok powered by FLUX.1 this week.
• FLUX.1 is the creation of Black Forest Labs, a company that launched on 1st August, founded by the creators of Stable Diffusion.
• The creators seem to have kept their penchant for allegedly using copyright protected material for training without permission.

This week, the AI platform locked behind X Premium, Grok, received an upgrade in the form of image generation.

Granted, xAI (the company developing Grok) released this functionality incredibly stealthily, in that it didn’t announce image generation at all in a blog post crowing about Grok-2. However, users quickly discovered the functionality and soon after it became clear that there were few if any guardrails preventing folks from making bombastic requests. The only thing Grok seemingly won’t generate is an image of a dead body.

Image generation is powered by a model known as FLUX.1 which was created by a Black Forest Labs, a company that states its mission is to “develop and advance state-of-the-art generative deep learning models for media such as images and videos, and to push the boundaries of creativity, efficiency and diversity.”

Interestingly, the company launched in an official capacity 15 days ago on 1st August. Black Forest Labs was founded by the original creators of Stable Diffusion and as such, attracted €28 000 000 in a funding round. Since the company broke cover, the FLUX.1 model has been praised for its output with VentureBeat reporting that many say it surpasses the models used in Midjourney and DALL-E.

That’s high praise and as we displayed in the feature story embedded above, FLUX.1’s images are rather good, especially when you consider how new Black Forest Labs is as a company.

However, while Black Forest Labs says its committed to transparency and ethical AI development, as with most AI companies, it’s rather cagey about what data it used to train the AI model.

While this isn’t anything new when it comes to AI development, FLUX.1 doesn’t seem to have any restrictions on what users can generate. This morning we asked it to generate an image of Mario and Luigi engaging in some gardening and it generated it instantly.

As AI has advanced its become clear that copyright and licensing content are afterthoughts for developers. However, where some AI platforms will refuse to generate images based on prompts that include mention of copyright protected material, FLUX.1 doesn’t seem to have such a block.

This is as clear a signal as one can get that FLUX.1 is using copyright protected material for training data and that may come back to haunt Black Forest Labs in the form of a lawsuit. This is especially risky given that FLUX.1 is being showcased by X’s Premium user base who often engage in misinformation and fakery in hopes of upping their engagement count for a greater payout from X’s revenue sharing programme. With a corpus of copyright protected material to draw from an few if any guardrails, it’s just a matter of time before somebody creates something that brings a lawsuit against xAI, X and Black Forest Labs.

Not that it will likely care, Stability AI, the company formed around Stable Diffusion was sued by Getty Images for alleged improper use of the Getty Images library. That lawsuit is yet to reach a conclusion after more than a year after it was filed and may just signal that even if you do ignore copyright protections, you can make your money and run before the copyright owners get what’s due.

The AI market is a lawless wild west and FLUX.1’s presence is a watershed moment for the technology. Will the technology fully embrace copyright infringement or will Black Forest Labs’ blatant use of copyright protected material inspire other developers to criticise it?

We simply don’t know, but and until, lawsuits are concluded and courts reach a decision, this wild fire will rage on.