How to Make Images with Grok Imagine (Prompts That Work)

The short version

Grok Imagine is xAI’s image and video maker, built into Grok. xAI describes it as a tool to “create and edit images, animate them into videos, and iterate fast”. Describe the picture like you’d brief a photographer, then adjust it one change at a time.

Step by step

1. Open Imagine

Go to grok.com/imagine or open Imagine in the Grok app. You can also ask for an image in a normal Grok chat: “Make an image of…”.

2. Describe the picture

A good image prompt answers four questions:

• What’s in it? “A golden retriever wearing a yellow raincoat.”
• Where? “On a wet city sidewalk at night, neon signs reflecting in puddles.”
• What style? “Realistic photo”, “flat illustration”, “watercolor”, “3D cartoon”.
• What shape? Square for a feed post, tall for a story, wide for a banner.

3. Refine with small changes

Change one thing at a time: “Same image, but daytime”, “Make the raincoat red”, “Less busy background”. Big rewrites tend to lose what you liked.

4. Save and label

Download the image you want. It keeps a Grok watermark, which xAI says marks it as AI-made.

Prompts to copy

Social post image:

A flat illustration of a cozy coffee shop counter with a chalkboard menu and fresh croissants,
warm colors, lots of empty space at the top for text. Square format.

Product mockup idea:

A realistic photo of a plain white ceramic mug on a wooden table by a window,
soft morning light, shallow depth of field. Wide format, no text.

Simple icon:

A simple, flat icon of a house with a leaf on the roof, two colors (dark green and cream),
centered on a plain background. No text.

Get prompt ideas first:

I need an image for a blog post about [topic]. Suggest 5 different image ideas,
each as a ready-to-use Grok Imagine prompt.

Example

You want: a header image for a landscaping company’s spring newsletter.

You type: “A realistic photo of a tidy front garden in spring with tulips along a stone path, morning light, wide format, space on the left for a headline.”

A good result: a clean, wide garden photo-style image. You then ask “Fewer flowers, more lawn” and “Make the path gray, not brown” until it fits. Add your text in your newsletter tool, not in the image.

Mistakes to avoid

• Asking for text inside the image. AI images often misspell words. Add text later in a design tool.
• Prompts with no style. “A dog” gives you a random style. Name one.
• Changing everything at once. You’ll lose the parts that worked.
• Passing AI images off as real photos. Customers notice, and the watermark says it anyway.

When not to use it

Don’t use it for anything that must show a real product, place or person accurately: menus, real estate listings, staff photos, before-and-after pictures. Take real photos for those. And never make images of real people without their permission.

Good to know

xAI’s FAQ says paid plans spend one weekly usage pool across Chat, Imagine and Voice, and that generating images and especially high-quality video uses more of it than chatting.

Related: edit photos with Grok Imagine and make videos with Grok Imagine.