XAI limits Grok images after uproar over sexualized content

(Bloomberg/Amy Thomson and Lucy White) — Elon Musk’s XAI restricted Grok’s image-generation feature for most users on the X social media platform after the artificial intelligence tool drew widespread condemnation for generating undressed images of women and children.

As of Friday, Grok replied to users on the X that they’d need a paid subscription to generate and edit images. Those features were initially introduced on X for free with daily limits. The standalone Grok app, which operates separately from the social network, still allows users to generate pictures without subscribing.

Grok’s image-generation capabilities have gained notoriety over the past few weeks after users began asking it to edit photos of people — mostly women — to show them in bikinis. More users capitalized on the feature to create sexualized images of women and children on X. The tool was used to generate thousands of undressed images of people per hour, many without the subject’s consent.

A spokeswoman for xAI didn’t have an immediate comment. Musk said in a post on X last week that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” Content featuring the sexualization and exploitation of children is also banned on X under its current terms of service.

The AI tool has blurred the line between the risqué and the illegal, with public criticism mounting after child-safety experts warned it was being used to create child sexual abuse material. Mainstream social media platforms risk fines or blocks if they fail to remove such content quickly and proactively.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said the restriction didn’t go far enough. The latest move “simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service: It’s not a solution,” Starmer’s spokesman Geraint Ellis told reporters in a briefing on Friday. “It’s insulting the victims of misogyny and sexual violence. What it does prove is that X can move swiftly when it wants to do so.”

The Internet Watch Foundation, a body designated by the UK government to identify child sexual abuse material, said it found “criminal” images on the dark web allegedly generated by Grok. Starmer has said British regulator Ofcom has the government’s “full support to take action.”

The European Union’s executive arm ordered X to retain internal documents relating to Grok until the end of the year, a spokesperson said during a press briefing on Thursday. The EU had condemned some of the explicit images of children on the platform as illegal.

X no longer publishes comprehensive data on its monthly active and paid users. In March 2024, it said it had 550 million monthly users. Only a fraction of that number would be paying.

(Updates with comment from UK prime minister’s office.)

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