Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot restricted some capabilities of its Imagine image generation to paid X subscribers, days after international uproar over the AI tool responding to user prompts with “digital stripping” of people, including minors.
The alterations seemingly occurred between Thursday and Friday. The Grok X account responds to image requests from non-subscribers with the message: “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paid subscribers,” and includes a link to subscribe.
But the limitation only affects one way X users can engage with Grok. An “edit image” button on pictures uploaded to X lets any user employ Grok to retouch the image. Both image and video generation remain freely accessible via Grok’s separate website and application. The restriction appears solely to apply to the function where users tag Grok in an X post with a prompt that Grok subsequently fulfills in a public X post.
CNN previously reported that in the weeks leading up to the surge of this trend on X, Musk voiced displeasure with Grok Imagine’s constraints during a meeting at xAI. Three key members of xAI’s safety team, including the head of product safety, also departed the firm in the weeks before the controversy.
Officials from the United Kingdom, the European Union, Malaysia, and India voiced worries regarding Grok’s restrictors and how they result in what many consider deepfake pornography.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson slammed X’s latest move, saying it “simply turns an AI feature that allows for the creation of illegal imagery into a premium service,” according to the BBC.
In the United States, a group of senators sent a letter to Apple and Google, urging them to remove X and Grok from their application stores for violating store distribution terms.
While disputes over digital stripping peaked on X, the site’s leaders—including Musk and product head Nikita Bier—boasted that X was showing some of its highest engagement figures ever.
xAI also revealed this week the conclusion of its Series E funding round, exceeding the target round size of $15 billion and obtaining $20 billion from investors.
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