What Is Grok Imagine 1.5?

Grok Imagine 1.5 is xAI's latest image-to-video model, released on May 31, 2026. Feed it a single still image and a short description of the motion you want, and it produces a high-fidelity clip — up to 15 seconds long, with natively generated, synchronized audio baked in.

That audio is the headline. Most AI video models hand you a silent clip and leave the sound design to you. Grok Imagine 1.5 generates dialogue, lip-sync, sound effects, ambient noise, and background music in the same inference pass as the video. One prompt, one render, a finished audiovisual clip.

It arrived at the top of the Artificial Analysis Video Arena image-to-video leaderboard, edging out heavyweights like ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 — a +52 Elo jump over the previous Grok Imagine release.

Why Grok Imagine 1.5 Matters

A Different Architecture

Most frontier video models — Sora, Veo — are built on diffusion-transformer pipelines. Grok Imagine 1.5 runs on xAI's Aurora engine, an autoregressive mixture-of-experts network that jointly models text, image, video, and audio tokens.

The practical upshot of modeling audio and video together, rather than bolting sound on afterward, is tight audiovisual coupling: lips that actually match the words, footsteps that land on the right frame, ambient sound that fits the scene. It's also what gives the model its competitive cost and latency.

Image-First by Design

Grok Imagine 1.5 is purpose-built for image-to-video. You bring the look — a product photo, a character portrait, a piece of concept art, a frame from another generation — and Grok brings it to life with motion and sound.

This is a meaningful distinction. Text-to-video is great for exploration, but most real production work starts from a specific visual you've already nailed down. Animating that exact image — instead of rolling the dice on a fresh text prompt — is where i2v shines, and it's exactly what Grok Imagine 1.5 optimizes for.

Synchronized Audio That Actually Lands

xAI rebuilt the audio stack for 1.5: more natural dialogue, richer ambient beds, cleaner sound effects, and music that tracks the on-screen action. For short-form creators, that collapses an entire post-production step. A talking-head clip arrives already lip-synced. A product shot arrives with the right whoosh and click. A moody landscape arrives with its own score.

Flexible Duration and Resolution

Grok Imagine 1.5 generates clips from 1 to 15 seconds at 480p or 720p. Keep it short and punchy for a hook, or stretch toward 15 seconds for a fuller beat. Because it's image-driven, the output naturally inherits the framing of your source image — no aspect-ratio guesswork.

How Grok Imagine 1.5 Compares

Grok Imagine 1.5's edge is the combination: a leaderboard-topping image-to-video model with fully integrated audio generated in the same step. If your workflow starts from an image and you want sound without a second tool, it's hard to beat.

Best Use Cases for Grok Imagine 1.5

Talking-Head and Avatar Clips

Animate a character portrait with synced dialogue and lip movement — no separate lip-sync pass required. Ideal for UGC-style ads, explainer intros, and social hooks.

Product Demos

Upload a product photo and describe the motion — a bottle rotating, a phone screen lighting up, a sneaker landing — and get the matching sound design (the click, the whoosh, the ambient room tone) in the same render.

Social Media Content

Turn a single strong frame into a 6–15 second clip with audio that's ready to post to TikTok, Reels, or Shorts. Because it's image-driven, your brand visuals stay exactly on-model.

Bringing Stills to Life

Photographers, illustrators, and concept artists can animate a hero image into a short, sound-complete moment — a fast way to add motion to a portfolio or pitch.

Using Grok Imagine 1.5 on GenFire

GenFire integrates Grok Imagine 1.5 directly into the Video Studio, right alongside Seedance 2.0, Sora 2, Veo 3.1, Kling V3, and the rest.

Image-to-Video in One Panel

Pick Grok Imagine v1.5 from the model dropdown, drop in a start frame, write your motion prompt, choose a duration (1–15s) and resolution (480p or 720p), and generate. The studio automatically hides controls the model doesn't use, so there's nothing to misconfigure.

Gallery Integration

Use any image from your generated gallery as the start frame — no re-uploading. Made an image you love with Nano Banana Pro or Seedream? Animate it with Grok in two clicks.

Transparent Credit Pricing

GenFire shows the exact credit cost before you generate.

Storyboard Integration

Grok Imagine 1.5 is also available in GenFire's Storyboard tool, where you can assign it to individual shots alongside other models — handy when a particular beat needs character dialogue or tightly synced sound.

Works Alongside Everything Else

On GenFire, Grok Imagine 1.5 isn't a standalone API — it's one model in a full toolkit. Generate a clip, then:

• Add AI captions with word-level timing
• Dub it into 32+ languages while preserving voice identity
• Edit it on the timeline with transitions, music, and other clips
• Export with or without watermarks in multiple formats

Getting Started with Grok Imagine 1.5

1. 1Create a free GenFire account — includes starter credits
2. 2Open the Video Studio from your dashboard
3. 3Select Grok Imagine v1.5 from the model dropdown
4. 4Upload a start image, write a motion prompt, and generate
5. 5Adjust duration (1–15s) and resolution (480p/720p) to taste

The Bottom Line

Grok Imagine 1.5 is the new benchmark for image-to-video — a leaderboard-topping model that animates your stills and scores them in a single pass. Its Aurora architecture makes the audio feel native rather than glued on, which is exactly what short-form, dialogue-driven content needs.

On GenFire, it's one click away in the Video Studio, and one step away from being captioned, dubbed, edited, and published.