How to Use Grok Imagine: The 2026 Beginner Walkthrough

Start at grok.com/imagine

1. 1

   Open Imagine from the Grok sidebar

   Grok Imagine lives at grok.com/imagine and in the Grok sidebar. You land on an explore wall of community generations — browse it for style ideas, then type in the prompt bar at the bottom to start your own.

   

2. 2

   Browse the wall for style ideas

   Scroll the explore grid to calibrate taste: fashion editorial, anime, product photography. There is no keyword search for the wall — search lives on X — so treat it as a mood board, find a look you like, and describe that look in your own words.

   

3. 3

   Borrow any tile with the action menu

   Open a tile's action menu to download the image, make a video from it, or jump back into Imagine and remix it. Remixing a community frame is the fastest way to reverse-engineer how a style was prompted.

   

Your First Batch: 16 Images in One Prompt

1. 4

   Type one prompt, keep it concrete

   The walkthrough's example is “McLaren 720S on a London street” — subject plus place is enough for a first batch, and Imagine fills in lighting and angles on its own. Set the aspect ratio before you hit Go: 16:9 for landscape, 1:1 for feed posts, 9:16 for stories.

   

2. 5

   Watch the batch stream in

   Results arrive progressively: the first tiles sharpen while the rest are still blurred placeholders, and the whole sixteen-image batch resolves in roughly ten seconds. Imagine always generates a full batch rather than a single image, so you compare variations instead of re-rolling one slot.

   

3. 6

   Compare the sixteen variations

   Every batch ships sixteen takes on your prompt — different angles, paint colors, and passing traffic. That volume is the tool's core advantage: ChatGPT and Gemini give you about four variants per prompt, Imagine gives you sixteen, and scrolling the wall loads even more.

   

4. 7

   Know what your plan allows

   This session runs on SuperGrok at $30 a month — heavy batch generation is not a Heavy-tier exclusive. Imagine is available on the free tier too, with tighter limits; if you hit a wall mid-project, wait for the quota reset before upgrading.

   

Refine With Prompted Edits

1. 8

   Edit by instruction, not by mask

   Open a keeper, click Edit image, clear the field, and type an instruction — “Change the car colour to yellow.” Imagine is a prompt editor: no brushes and no selections, you just say the change you want.

   

2. 9

   Check the diff, not just the result

   The yellow repaint lands in about ten seconds. Compare before and after at the edges: instruction edits usually respect everything except the target, but busy scenes can drift — and if they do, the original batch frame is often a better base than the edited one.

   

Text Rendering for Social Posts

1. 10

   Prompt the whole poster, words included

   Describe the graphic and put the copy in quotes: “a viral AI news Instagram graphic in a bold and purple Art Deco metal style” plus the headline itself. Imagine renders the lettering inside the batch — one prompt, sixteen legible posters.

   

2. 11

   Expect slower renders on text batches

   Lettered images take roughly 20 to 25 seconds against 10 to 12 for plain ones. The payoff is accuracy: short headlines survive intact, long paragraphs fall apart — so ship the poster straight from the detail view while the lettering is clean.

   

From Still to Video, With Sound

1. 12

   Open the video menu on any image

   The action menu's Make a video entry exposes the settings before you commit: 480p preserves quota, 6-second clips render fastest, and the aspect ratio follows the image. Audio is on by default — Grok Imagine generates speech and ambience with the clip.

   

2. 13

   Generate the frame first, then animate it

   The demo prompt “an old man complaining about taxes, he's wearing a red hat” produces a sixteen-frame batch of stills first. Picking the face you like before animating beats prompting the video blind — the image batch is your casting call.

   

Uploads, Remixes, and Upscaling

1. 14

   Untick auto-video before uploading

   Drop in your own photo and Imagine immediately starts animating it — the Auto-generate videos on upload toggle is on by default. Switch it off first if you only want to edit the still; either way, the upload converts to a six-second clip in seconds.

   

2. 15

   Remix a clip from the explore wall

   Find a video you like on the explore wall and open its starting frame. You keep the composition and swap the action — that is the remix path, and it doubles as a masterclass in how motion prompts are written.

   

3. 16

   Rewrite the action, keep the look

   The demo takes the samurai duel's first frame and prompts “samurai pulls out a gun and starts firing.” The result keeps the storm-lit field and costumes while the action changes — generative, imperfect, and usually one re-roll away from usable.

   

4. 17

   Upscale before you download

   Open the clip's menu and hit Upscale video — about ten seconds for a sharper master. Downloading is a browser right-click, Save video as. Upscale anything destined for a bigger screen; the 480p original is fine for drafts.

   

Frequently asked questions