Black Forest Labs, the startup behind Grok’s image generator, releases an API
Reading Time: 2 minutesBlack Forest Labs, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup behind the image generation component of xAI’s Grok assistant, has launched an API in beta — and released a new model.
The new API provides Black Forest Labs’ family of image generation models, Flux, in a managed package. Using it, developers can choose which Flux model to build into their app or service. Add-ons include a content moderation layer and constraints on image resolution.
Black Forest Labs also unveiled today its latest image generation model, Flux1.1 Pro, which it claims provides six times faster generation than its predecessor, Flux.1 Pro. The model can scale up to 2k (2048 × 1080) images — a feature that’ll soon come to the API — ‘while also improving image quality, prompt adherence, and diversity,’ says Black Forest Labs in a blog post.
In addition to Black Forest Labs’ own platform, Flux1.1 Pro is available through the startup’s partners, including Together AI, Replicate, Fal.AI, and Freepik.
Prices start at 2.5 credits per image; 100 credits cost $1. Flux1.1 Pro costs 4 credits per image.
Black Forest Labs, which is based in Germany and recently emerged from stealth with $31 million in funding, was co-founded by the engineers who built the tech behind Stability AI, including Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser, Dominik Lorenz, and CEO Robin Rombach.
The startup became the subject of controversy after its deal with xAI to build Flux into Grok without safety guardrails, which resulted in a torrent of outrageous — and atrocious — images. Black Forest Labs hasn’t disclosed which data it used to train Flux, but the images on xAI suggest that copyrighted works made their way into the training set, which could — if the rights holders decide to sue — become a liability.
Black Forest Labs, whose other backers include Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan and former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe, is developing video-generating models, and is said to be raising $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. That’s a significant jump up from its previous valuation of $150 million.
The API, no doubt, is a key part of this. Training and running models is expensive, and investors generally want to see returns — or at the very least, a roadmap to returns.
API or no, it’s sure to be an uphill climb to dominance in media generation — if that’s indeed the goal — for Black Forest Labs, considering the formidable and growing competition. Ideogram, Pika, Luma, Runway, Stability, and Midjourney are just a few of the players in the space, not to mention incumbents like OpenAI and Google.
Ref: techcrunch
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