The Dark Enchantments of Grok Imagine

The Mirror of Erised and other cloaks of invisibility

If you’ve spent any time on X the last few days, Grok’s new image-aliver called “Imagine” has become ubiquitous. I have a love-hate attachment to Elon and his team. I’m glad he bought Twitter and provided something close to free speech, or at least a little closer, than the prior proprietors. But his unrepentant transhumanist futurism grates on me, as is his wanton disregard for cultural norms and traditional arrangements. But his latest X add-on is a feature that lets users create AI-generated images and 6-second video clips using either a text prompt or an uploaded image. And of course like all shiny new toys, everyone is playing with it. Alas, I have deep misgivings, as we still do not seem willing to reckon with the power and phenomenon of images.

This meme captures my feelings:

As always, whenever I have a visceral reaction, I ask myself “why?” Why do I have such a violent precognitive reaction to something that many folks will tell you is “just a tool”?

The word “just” does so much covering, I’ve learned. It’s a word used to neutralize deeper thinking, and puts you on the defensive as it extinguishes curiosity. But again, why do I hate it?

Few things have struck me in the Harry Potter books quite like the moving pictures in the daily newspaper, or the moving portraits in Dumbledore’s office and the hallways of Hogwarts.

It was compelling when I first read the books over 20 years ago, and I think the film adaptations capture the sense really well. Good paintings often imply this kind of movement, but these nail it. Elsewhere in the series, Harry is given photos of his parents, with similar movement in them. He stares at them for hours, tantalizing the lovelorn and abandoned boy. But this is of course a fictional and fantastic world, so I have never given it much thought.

But alas, our technology is quickly catching up with this magic. Grok is advertising this “next great thing” and it is pretty powerful. So what? For a more penetrating insight into my own misgivings, and a deeper illustration of these dark charms, and their potential downsides, I’d like to take you to J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter series, and in particular to the “Mirror of Erised” in the first book.

This enchanted mirror appears in the middle of Harry’s first year, during Christmas break. While nearly everyone has gone home or on holiday, Harry is left to stay at school. Given the awful treatment at the hands of his aunt and uncle, he sees as a great blessing, as he need not spend any time with his adopted family the Dursley’s. He usually gets nothing (while his cousin gets everything), but this time he gets treats and even a homemade sweater from the Weasley’s. Nestled in his small stack, however, is also an anonymous gift which turns out to be an invisibility cloak. Do not let the overt simplicity of this tale fool you. Rowling is engaged in the work of deep symbol, and oftentimes, the best symbols are those that seem so innocent and straightforward. It is a way of hiding in plain sight. Significantly, this gift is special, but not because it is “just” a cool magical item with real powers, but it was allegedly his own father’s possession. The accompanying note reads:

“Your father left his in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you.

Use it well.

A very merry Christmas to you”

It is easy to see why the item takes on double significance. It has magical powers, but it was also a direct and physical link to the father he never knew. So it is magic in two ways: by its power AND by its connection to that which eludes him: his family of origin.

“His father’s…this had been his father’s. He let the material flow over his hands, smoother than silk, light as air. Use it well, the note had said.”

And use it well he will.

I find it endlessly fascinating that the concreteness of the gift (and the anonymity of his patron) is at the same time an item that confers invisibility. It renders the wearer invisible or hidden, giving the power to physically hide in plain sight. His friend Ron knows what it is and they try it out. It works! He puts it to use that very night and is able to sneak past Filch and explore the restricted section of the library in order to find the necessary lore of Nicolas Flamel, the key to unlocking the mystery they are trying to solve. He picks up a book in the library and it immediately emits a scream, giving Harry away. To avoid capture he flits right past the guard and into an open door and comes across another concrete thing:

“It looked like an unused classroom. The dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket—but propped against the wall facing him was something that didn’t look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to keep it out of the way.

It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.”¹

This is the Mirror of Erised, though he does not know its name nor its peculiar properties yet. He just takes in what he sees. Watch the way we watch Harry piece things together. It’s great writing, even as it appears so simple:

“His panic fading now that there was no sound of Filch and Snape, Harry moved nearer to the mirror, wanting to look at himself but see no reflection again. He stepped in front of it.

He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He whirled around. His heart was pounding far more furiously than when the book had screamed—for he has seen not only himself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him.

But the room was empty. Breathing very fast, he turned slowly back to the mirror.

There he was, reflected in it, white an scared-looking, and there, reflected right behind him, were at least ten others. Harry looked over his shoulder—but still, no one was there. Or were they all invisible, too? Was he in fact in a room full of invisible people and this mirror’s trick was that it reflected them, invisible or not?”

Note the way he rifles through the possible explanations for this extraordinary phenomenon. His reaction is so, well, real. Note how he tries to touch that which turns out to be invisible, an act of verification. He can’t feel it, physically, but he certainly feels it otherwise. But what exactly does he see?

“He looked in the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. He reached out a hand and felt the air behind him. If she was really there, he’d touch her, their reflections were so close together, but he felt only air — she and the others existed only in the mirror.

She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes — her eyes were just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green — exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry’s did.

Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection.

‘Mum?’ he whispered. ‘Dad?’

They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry’s knobbly knees — Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

How long he stood there, he didn’t know. The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a distant noise brought him back to his senses. He couldn’t stay here, he had to find his way back to bed. He tore his eyes away from his mother’s face, whispered ‘I’ll come back,’ and hurried from the room.”

This is no “mere” children’s book. Rowling is plumbing the depths of real ache, real longing, real desire. This is a powerful enchantment, as it can somehow get inside you and reflect you back to you. We feel this enchantment ourselves as we read along with Harry, feeling and thinking and seeing through him. Eager to share this experience he brings his friend Ron back the next day. But instead of Ron seeing Harry’s family, he sees himself as Captain of the team, hoisting a trophy in triumph. Harry can’t see it; only Ron. They are unsure as to why. So, on the third night, he returns alone. He again sees his mother and father smiling at him with those eyes. But in mid revelry, mid enchantment, he hears the voice of Dumbledore: “So — back again, Harry?”

Harry, less careful this third night, has made all kind of noises and been much less cautious. Dumbledore quips: “Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you…you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.” Harry is taken off guard, and Dumbledore explains the mirror thusly:

“‘Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?’

Harry thought. Then he said slowly, ‘It shows us what we want…whatever we want…’

‘Yes and no,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘It shows us nothing more and or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.’”

The undertones of Narcissus swarm below the surface, with dark hints of “wasting away” before it, “entranced” by the image, and even “driven mad”. Mirrors and images are powerful, especially as they do not so much possess a reality, but fool you into mis-taking a simulacrum for a reality.

Grok Imagine, and other such enchantments will serve as a similar kind of simulacrum, of this I have no doubt. Why bother with a “shitty what is” when you can instead engage in a “shiny what could be”? The risks of such magic reside in such magic’s ability to coopt and confound the user. It shows us what we want, as if what we want somehow resides outside of our selves—that what the mirror shows is not so much inside you but somehow outside, not a reflection of externals but a deeper reality. Dumbledore notes the danger. The danger is mis-taking the ineffable for the concrete, thus not rendering insight so much as confounding by a blindness-as-insight. Harry runs the risk of falling in love with his own projections as if they existed in some kind of real way, outside of himself. In this, the gazer cannot see himself. It is a vision that conceals rather than illumine.

Now, there is nothing wrong with desire, per se. But Dumbledore’s point is that the mirror blinds us to the nature of desire itself, as if the viewer would say something along the lines of “well it must be real, since it is what I want. See? It is RIGHT there!”

But here Ron’s experience of the Mirror of Erised is helpful. Does he really want to be captain? Does the aggrandizing image hold any kind of binding reality for him? Or, rather, does it reflect a fantasy? It can be very difficult to ascertain the difference between fantasies and dreams. As Dumbledore deftly notes, Ron feels overshadowed by his successful family. He projects the solution of his limited value by imaging a vision of competition. Is it real? Is this really who and what Ron is? Is his projected vision what he really wants? We must dream, partake in the imaginal, in order to live a life of meaning, but oftentimes our adolescent longings are, in retrospect, rather puerile and unreal. I remember wanting to be the next Neil Young or Bob Dylan. They just seemed so cool. I wanted to be like them, but the wisdom afforded by age has revealed to me the simpler and much more pedestrian truth: I want to be seen, to be loved, to be esteemed and respected. My 16 year old self didn’t have the language for that. It was a fantasy, not a real dream. There are latent dangers in such images, dangers which will rob us of our agency and our rootedness in reality.