xAI ends free Grok Imagine AI video generation tier

xAI has made the biggest change for Grok Imagine AI video generation tool for users, as it’s no longer being offered for free. A week ago, users online started sharing their experience with the Grok Imagine, which is now showing a SuperGrok subscription wall as soon as you hit the generate button. That said, you can no longer generate images or videos through Imagine without a paid subscription.

Launched in July last year, Grok Imagine enables text-to-video generation. Initially, the model was used to create short videos with adequate quality. However, the model quickly saw major improvements in motion and graphics compared to the previous releases.

xAI team has worked quite a lot on the new model’s training, bringing more precision to instruction following, while adding an audio feature and extending video length. As of today, Grok Imagine is available on web and mobile platforms for easy access.

From the very beginning, Grok Imagine has allowed free users to explore their ideas and turn them into videos. However, this free tier was capped with a generation rate, which was sufficient for many users.

Soon after this change, xAI announced a SuperGrok Lite, a $10 per month plan for users with basic Imagine access. To be clear, SuperGrok Lite has the same features as the free tiers. So, basically, the AI firm added a $10 tag to its free plan features.

Following this change, many X users shared the subscription wall screenshot, as they could no longer generate free videos with Grok Imagine. That brought attention to an xAI team member, Yukan, who confirmed that the Imagine user base increase has led to this new change.

“Given the growing number of users, imagine it is now paid only,” replied Yukan.

An increasing user base is a good thing for any AI tool, but it impacts the computing cost. The more user the AI tool serve, the more burden of cost increases. This becomes even more important if free users outnumber paid. This might be the case with the scenario, and xAI wants to allocate its computing capacity to paid users, who can help it to reduce expenditure.

Who can use Imagine?

SuperGrok and SuperGrok Heavy subscriptions are the most prioritized tiers. Similarly, the X Premium+ provides the same level of user rate as SuperGrok, but Grok Premium users can also have the basic rate of usage. The newly added SuperGrok Lite will give you 480p video generation with a rate cap.

Users who want to continue using Grok Imagine must buy a subscription. If you want basic user rates, then choose the X premium plan, which will also give you a blue tick. Or go for Premium+, which will bring extended user rate for Imagine, Grok, and many X features.