Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot on Elon Musk’s platform X, is restricting its image-editing tools to paying subscribers amid a controversy over the generation of nonconsensual sexualized images of adults and children.
Researchers told The Wall Street Journal the tool was producing sexually suggestive or “nudifying” images at very high volume, citing a snapshot in which Grok generated thousands of such images an hour. They said the trend shows how quickly mainstream AI can normalize abusive content and outpace safety rules.
Women’s rights campaigners described being digitally undressed and harassed, while experts say the episode shows how quickly generative AI can be used to generate abusive images compared with the pace of safety measures and lawmaking.
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Straight Arrow News reported earlier this week that the European Union was considering action against Grok over the creation of sexualized images of minors. The EU joined Britain, India, Malaysia and France in threatening to punish Grok over the undressing of minors.
The EU’s threat came after Grok acknowledged it may have violated U.S. laws regarding child sexual abuse material. Grok apologized for publishing “an AI image of two young girls in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt.”
How Grok enabled nonconsensual images
In late December, Grok began letting users edit photos with text prompts such as “take her clothes off” or “put her in a bikini.” Analysts at the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation found sexualized images of girls between 11 and 13 on a dark web forum whose members claimed they had used Grok.
Hotline head Ngaire Alexander said the topless images appeared to meet Britain’s definition of criminal child sexual-abuse material.
X’s paywall response draws new criticism
After regulators and users raised concerns, Grok began telling people that “image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers,” linking to X’s premium service, The Washington Post reported.
A Downing Street spokesperson called that response “insulting to victims of misogyny and sexual abuse.” British influencer Jess Davies said she could still upload a photo to Grok’s standalone app and receive an unwanted sexualized image of herself.
Experts quoted by the Post said the paywall does not address the core safety risks. Law professor Clare McGlynn said X appeared to be turning “a crisis into another profit-making opportunity,” while social-media specialist Karen Middleton said putting the “nudify” function behind a paywall “doesn’t make it safer — it just makes it monetizable.”
Middleton urged X to disable the feature and require identity and consent checks before transforming images.
Lawmakers step in
Musk has said on X that anyone using Grok to create “illegal content will suffer the same consequences” as if they uploaded it. An account for Grok said xAI, Grok’s parent company, has safeguards against “depicting minors in minimal clothing” and that “improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely,” while xAI has said it is hiring for its safety team.
In the United States, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said there is “an explosion of AI generating explicit images of children” and urged Congress to pass deepfake legislation she has championed.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation called on the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to investigate X.
