Grok Imagine after the layoffs: where the Imagine tab went

SpaceX's AI group cut about 60 people from the Grok Imagine team, and many users lost the Imagine tab. Here is what happened, where image and video went, and what still works.

In short: The Information reported on November 13, 2026 that SpaceX's AI group, the former xAI, cut about 60 people from the Grok Imagine team, leaving a handful to keep it running · the company is putting its people and compute into coding tools and the Grok Bot agent instead · around the same time, many users found the Imagine tab gone from Grok, with grok.com/imagine now opening the normal chat in Image and Video mode · Grok Imagine still works, and xAI has not announced any shutdown · neither SpaceX nor Musk had commented on the cuts when we published.

Grok Imagine was one of the products xAI talked about most. Eight months ago Elon Musk said the company was "doubling down" on it. This week it lost most of its team, and a lot of people opened Grok to find the Imagine tab missing. Below is what has actually been reported, what is only coming from users, how to keep making images and video today, and what to watch next. We mark clearly which parts are confirmed and which are not.

What The Information reported

On Friday, November 13, The Information reported that the AI group inside SpaceX, which it calls SpaceX Super Intelligence, laid off roughly 60 employees who worked on Grok Imagine over the past week. In its own post on X, the publication said the cuts leave "just a handful to maintain the product" and "signal a shift toward AI coding tools and agents as Chinese companies pull ahead in video generation."

The full story is behind The Information's paywall, so we rely on its post on X and on Investing.com's summary of the report. According to that summary, management has moved resources to AI coding tools and to Grok Bot, its autonomous agent. The report also said independent benchmarks showed Grok Imagine trailing the leading video models, and that video generation needs far more computing power than text. It named Google and Meta as the main remaining US contenders in video, and said Chinese companies such as ByteDance, Kuaishou and MiniMax treat image and video models as a core priority, with ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 widely seen as the benchmark.

Coverage elsewhere describes the cuts as more than half of the team. We have not seen an official number, and SpaceX has not confirmed the layoffs in public. Treat 60 as The Information's figure, not a company statement.

Timeline of Grok Imagine: launch on July 28, 2025, Imagine 1.0 on February 2, 2026, OpenAI shutting Sora on March 24, Musk saying xAI is doubling down in March, Imagine Image 2.0 on August 7, an API model retired on November 2, and about 60 people cut on November 13, 2026 — How Grok Imagine got here. Dates come from xAI's posts and docs; the November 13 cuts are as reported by The Information.

How we got here

Grok Imagine arrived in the Grok apps on July 28, 2025, turning text prompts into images and short videos. It grew fast. When xAI announced Grok Imagine 1.0 on February 2, 2026, it called it "our biggest leap yet," with 10 second videos at 720p and "dramatically better audio," and said Imagine had made 1.245 billion videos in the previous 30 days. Video generation also came to the xAI API in late January.

Then OpenAI stepped back from the same market. On March 24, 2026, OpenAI said it would shut down Sora, its video app and API, about six months after launch, and Disney wound down a partnership built around it. Musk took the other side of that bet in public. In March he posted that the next Grok Imagine release would be "epic" and that the company was "doubling down," and a few days later he wrote "Big release next week". The bigger image release slipped, and arrived in August instead.

That release was Imagine Image 2.0, launched on August 7 as the new Quality Mode on grok.com/imagine and in the iOS and Android apps. xAI built it for real design work: sharp small text, layouts that hold together, and editing tools such as a magic wand for one region, background removal, smart resize and up to five reference images in one request. xAI said it ranked second in the world on the Arena leaderboards for both text to image and image editing. It is also the last Imagine announcement on xAI's news page; the company has posted nothing about Imagine since.

Two other changes came quietly before the cuts. In its developer docs, xAI gave 60 days notice and then retired the grok-imagine-image-quality model on November 2. Requests to it, and to grok-imagine-image-pro, are now served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at its low quality setting, which costs a cent less per image. And SpaceX itself had been shifting toward coding for months, including its deal to buy the coding company Cursor in August.

Where the Imagine tab went

This is the part most people are searching for, and it is also the part with the least official information. Starting around November 12 to 13, many users on the web, Android and iPhone, paid subscribers included, reported that the Imagine tab had disappeared from Grok's sidebar. The sidebar now shows Library, Grok Bot and Projects, but no Imagine. Typing grok.com/imagine opens the regular chat with Image and Video mode selected.

These reports come from users on Reddit's r/grok and were collected by the blog RoboRhythms. xAI has not explained the change, and its release notes do not mention it. So we cannot tell you whether this is a deliberate redesign, a staged rollout or a bug. The timing, a day before the layoff report, makes a deliberate move look likely, but that is our reading, not something xAI has said.

Diagram: before, Grok had a separate Imagine tab in the sidebar; now, for many accounts, image and video generation runs from Image mode and Video mode in the main chat box, and grok.com/imagine opens the chat. Still works: image and video in chat, the Imagine API. Unclear: warning icons on some saved creations, and any roadmap — Where image and video generation moved for many accounts. Based on user reports, not confirmed by xAI.

How to make images and video in Grok now

If your Imagine tab is gone, the feature itself has not gone with it. Here is what works, based on what users report and what xAI still publishes:

Use the chat box. Open a normal Grok chat and pick Image or Video mode, or simply go to grok.com/imagine, which now lands you there. Prompts work the same way as before.

Check your saved work in Library. Your past creations should still be stored with your account. Some users see warning triangles on saved items or a library view that will not load properly. If that happens, wait and try again rather than deleting anything; nothing official suggests creations have been removed.

Try another device or browser. Some users say the old tab still shows in a different browser, a private window or the Android app. That is an unofficial workaround and may stop working at any time.

Check the status page before you troubleshoot. RoboRhythms reported on November 14 that xAI's status page listed Imagine as Operational with no open incidents. If generation itself fails, that page is the first place to look.

What it means if you build on the Imagine API

For developers nothing has been switched off. grok-imagine-image-2.0 is live for generation and editing, the 1.0 image model is unaffected by the November 2 change, and video generation is still listed on the API. If your code still calls grok-imagine-image-quality or grok-imagine-image-pro, it keeps working, but it now gets Image 2.0 at low quality. xAI recommends changing the model name to grok-imagine-image-2.0 and choosing a quality level yourself: low for the cheapest images, medium for more detail, or auto, which uses low for new images and medium for edits.

The bigger question is the future. A product kept alive by a handful of people tends to get fewer new features and slower fixes. If Imagine is central to something you sell, it is sensible to test a second provider now so you can switch without a rush. That is general caution, not a sign that xAI plans to turn the API off; it has said nothing of the kind.

What it says about xAI's priorities

Read together, the signals point one way. Grok Bot has had a release almost every week since August, including Grok Bot 1.0 for teams and the Mac apps update this week. Grok Build and Cursor give the company two coding products. Musk has said serving Grok Bot is expensive, which we covered in Grok Bot usage limits and serving costs, and the next model, Grok 4.8, is going to Grok Bot users first.

Video is the most compute hungry thing an AI company can offer, and it is hard to charge enough for. OpenAI reached the same conclusion with Sora in March. Moving people and chips from video to agents and coding fits the way SpaceX's AI group has been talking all autumn. What is surprising is the speed: from "doubling down" in March to a skeleton crew in November.

What to watch next

A statement from SpaceX or Musk. So far there is none. A post confirming the cuts, or explaining the Imagine tab, would settle a lot of the open questions.

Whether the Imagine tab comes back. If it returns for everyone, the change was likely a bug or a test. If it stays gone, image and video are now just modes of the main Grok chat.

API notices. xAI announces model retirements in its developer docs with notice, as it did for the quality model. Any change to Imagine's video or image models should show up there first.

Grok Bot features that use images. If Imagine lives on, it may be mostly as a tool Grok Bot and other Grok features call, rather than as a separate creative app.

Questions people are asking

Is Grok Imagine shutting down? Nothing xAI has published says so. The product still works in the Grok chat and on the API. The Information reported that a handful of staff remain to maintain it.

Why did my Imagine tab disappear? xAI has not said. Many users lost it around November 12 to 13, and grok.com/imagine now opens the chat in Image and Video mode. Use that mode to keep generating.

Are my old images and videos deleted? There is no sign of that. Some users see warning icons in their library, which looks like a display problem rather than removal. Do not delete anything while it settles.

How many people were laid off? About 60, according to The Information. SpaceX has not given a number.

Does this affect Grok Bot? Not directly. If anything, the report says the people and compute are going toward agents like Grok Bot and toward coding tools.

We will update this post if SpaceX or Musk comments, or if xAI changes how Imagine is offered. For every other dated Grok change, see the Grok timeline.