xAI will retire grok-imagine-image-quality on 2 November

xAI's release notes for 2 September give grok-imagine-image-quality a retirement date of 2 November 2026.

What happens to requests

They keep working, on a different model. xAI says requests to the old name will be served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at quality low, with the same request shape and a lower price per image. The original Image 1.0 model is not affected. An integration does not break on 2 November, but its pictures may change, so it is worth testing against Image 2.0 now rather than finding out from a user.

Image 2.0 changed last week

The model taking over is not the one that launched. On 28 August xAI gave Image 2.0's quality parameter an auto setting and made it the default, which picks low for generation and medium for editing. Editing now takes up to five source images instead of three, and two wider aspect ratios arrived: 21:9 and 5:2.

Why it matters for video

In an image-to-video workflow the first frame decides most of what the clip looks like, and 21:9 is the cinema frame. A still made at the right aspect ratio is a still that does not need cropping before it is animated.