Rock instability and failure are the intrinsic causes of mining disasters and slope slippage in deep underground engineering. Capturing and identifying the precursor signal of the rock fracture during the stress-induced rock failure process is crucial for safe construction. In this paper, the infrared radiation and acoustic emission (AE) experiments of red sandstone, marble and granite under uniaxial loading were conducted. The infrared radiation characteristics of different rock samples during the deformation and fracture process were investigated. Valid infrared radiation temperature (VIRT) is proposed to document the damage evolution of rocks, which showed the abrupt variations around the peak stress. And the changes of VIRT were almost identical with AE hit counts at the fractured moment of rocks. In addition, the new indicator effective VIRT values (GIRT) and total GIRT counts (GIRTs) based on the Grubbs criterion are defined to further accurately and succinctly reveal the damage and fracture characteristics of rock via temporal and spatial distribution of infrared information. The experimental results show that the sudden change of GIRT and the GIRTs on different rocks before reaching the peak stress, and the GIRT is randomly distributed over the observation area in the initial deformation. However, concentrated GIRT distribution occurred at the serious damage and macro cracks position. Therefore, GIRT and GIRTs can be used as a harbinger for rock failure, and these indicators provided a reference for predicting disasters in mining and engineering.