xAI to retire the grok-imagine-image-quality model slug on November 2, 2026

xAI will retire the grok-imagine-image-quality model slug on November 2, 2026, redirecting existing requests to grok-imagine-image-2.0 at a lower per-image price rather than cutting off access outright.

What's new

xAI's release notes state: "On November 2, 2026, grok-imagine-image-quality is retired. Requests to the slug will be served by grok-imagine-image-2.0 with quality set to low, with no change to the request or response shape and at a lower per-image price." Developers who have integrated against the grok-imagine-image-quality endpoint do not need to change any request or response handling code — xAI is routing the old slug to the newer model automatically, with the quality parameter fixed to low. The company also confirms that the original grok-imagine-image (1.0) model is unaffected by this change and continues to operate as before. xAI has published a dedicated migration guide for developers who want to move off the retiring slug proactively rather than rely on the automatic redirect.

Context

grok-imagine-image-quality was a higher-fidelity image generation variant in xAI's Grok Imagine lineup, sitting alongside the base grok-imagine-image model. Since launching Grok Imagine, xAI has iterated quickly on the underlying image models, and grok-imagine-image-2.0 represents the newer generation now absorbing the retiring slug's traffic. This is part of a broader pattern of xAI consolidating older image and video model variants as it ships newer versions, rather than maintaining an expanding set of parallel endpoints indefinitely.

Why it matters

Retiring a model slug by silently redirecting it to a newer, cheaper model is a low-friction way to sunset infrastructure without breaking existing integrations, and it signals xAI's confidence that grok-imagine-image-2.0 at quality: low meets or exceeds what developers were getting from the dedicated quality-tier model. For developers billing against xAI's image API, the lower per-image price on the redirected traffic is a modest but real cost reduction that arrives without any code changes on their end.