xAI retires grok-imagine-image-quality, old calls go to low quality
The model slug retires today. xAI automatically redirects existing requests to grok-imagine-image-2.0 at its "low" quality tier, which costs a cent less per image.
xAI retires the grok-imagine-image-quality model slug today, after a notice period that began on 2 September. Requests to the old slug don’t break: xAI now serves them with grok-imagine-image-2.0 at quality: "low". The request and response shapes are unchanged, and every parameter the old model accepted still works.
The catch is quality and price both move. grok-imagine-image-2.0 costs $0.04 an image against the retired model’s $0.05, so anyone left on the old slug gets a cent off every image, at the lower low setting rather than whatever the old model produced. grok-imagine-image-2.0 also supports medium and auto quality tiers, where auto currently resolves to low for generation and medium for editing.
Why it matters: if your product calls grok-imagine-image-quality, the API keeps answering after today but the images it returns are quietly worse than before, at a slightly lower price. Nothing errors, so nothing forces you to notice. Switch the model parameter to grok-imagine-image-2.0 and pick medium or auto explicitly if the drop in quality matters to you.
model: "grok-imagine-image-2.0",
quality: "medium"