X Rolls Out Grok-Powered Auto-Translation and AI Photo Editing; xAI Reorganizes Engineering Team Ahead of SpaceX IPO

X began rolling out new Grok-powered features including automatic post translation expanding globally and an AI-powered photo editor on iOS with 'edit with words,' drawing tools, and face blurring. Separately, xAI released Grok 3 Mini via API with native function calling, JSON mode, and live search integration priced at $0.30 per million input tokens — its most affordable offering. xAI also reorganized its engineering leadership ahead of the SpaceX IPO, appointing Aman Madaan to oversee model factory and tooling and Aditya Gupta to head post-training and reinforcement learning. Security analysts noted Grok's relatively loose alignment has been cited as a potential advantage for non-standard users including the Pentagon, which reportedly began using Grok following Defense Secretary Hegseth's January 2026 announcement.