Set up AI Proxy for image generation with Grok
Create a Gateway Service and a Route, then enable the AI Proxy plugin and configure it with the image/v1/images/generations route type, the xAI provider, the Grok model, and your xAI API key.
Prerequisites
Kong Konnect
This is a Konnect tutorial and requires a Konnect personal access token.
-
Create a new personal access token by opening the Konnect PAT page and selecting Generate Token.
-
Export your token to an environment variable:
export KONNECT_TOKEN='YOUR_KONNECT_PAT'Copied! -
Run the quickstart script to automatically provision a Control Plane and Data Plane, and configure your environment:
curl -Ls https://get.konghq.com/quickstart | bash -s -- -k $KONNECT_TOKEN --deck-outputCopied!This sets up a Konnect Control Plane named
quickstart, provisions a local Data Plane, and prints out the following environment variable exports:export DECK_KONNECT_TOKEN=$KONNECT_TOKEN export DECK_KONNECT_CONTROL_PLANE_NAME=quickstart export KONNECT_CONTROL_PLANE_URL=https://us.api.konghq.com export KONNECT_PROXY_URL='http://localhost:8000'Copied!Copy and paste these into your terminal to configure your session.
Kong Gateway running
This tutorial requires Kong Gateway Enterprise. If you don’t have Kong Gateway set up yet, you can use the quickstart script with an enterprise license to get an instance of Kong Gateway running almost instantly.
-
Export your license to an environment variable:
export KONG_LICENSE_DATA='LICENSE-CONTENTS-GO-HERE'Copied! -
Run the quickstart script:
curl -Ls https://get.konghq.com/quickstart | bash -s -- -e KONG_LICENSE_DATACopied!Once Kong Gateway is ready, you will see the following message:
Kong Gateway Ready
decK v1.43+
decK is a CLI tool for managing Kong Gateway declaratively with state files. To complete this tutorial, install decK version 1.43 or later.
This guide uses deck gateway apply, which directly applies entity configuration to your Gateway instance.
We recommend upgrading your decK installation to take advantage of this tool.
You can check your current decK version with deck version.
Required entities
For this tutorial, you’ll need Kong Gateway entities, like Gateway Services and Routes, pre-configured. These entities are essential for Kong Gateway to function but installing them isn’t the focus of this guide. Follow these steps to pre-configure them:
-
Run the following command:
echo ' _format_version: "3.0" services: - name: example-service url: http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything routes: - name: example-route paths: - "/anything" service: name: example-service ' | deck gateway apply -Copied!
To learn more about entities, you can read our entities documentation.
xAI
This tutorial uses xAI:
- Create an xAI account.
- In your xAI console , click Create an API key.
- In the Name field, enter a name for the key.
- Click Create API key.
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Create a decK variable with the API key:
export DECK_XAI_API_KEY: 'YOUR XAI API KEY'Copied!
Configure the plugin
Set up AI Proxy to use the image/v1/images/generations route type and the xAI Grok 2 Image Gen model:
echo '
_format_version: "3.0"
plugins:
- name: ai-proxy
config:
route_type: image/v1/images/generations
genai_category: image/generation
auth:
header_name: Authorization
header_value: Bearer ${{ env "DECK_XAI_API_KEY" }}
model:
provider: xai
name: grok-2-image
' | deck gateway apply -
Validate
Send a request containing a prompt and a response format to validate:
curl -X POST "$KONNECT_PROXY_URL/anything" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body \
-H "Accept: application/json"\
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
--json '{
"prompt": "Generate an image of King Kong",
"response_format": "url"
}'
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8000/anything" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body \
-H "Accept: application/json"\
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
--json '{
"prompt": "Generate an image of King Kong",
"response_format": "url"
}'
Cleanup
Clean up Konnect environment
If you created a new control plane and want to conserve your free trial credits or avoid unnecessary charges, delete the new control plane used in this tutorial.
Destroy the Kong Gateway container
curl -Ls https://get.konghq.com/quickstart | bash -s -- -d