After ‘digital undressing’ criticism, Elon Musk’s Grok limits some image generation to paid subscribers

By Hadas Gold, CNN

(CNN) — Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot has limited some of its Imagine image generation features to paid X subscribers, days after international uproar over the AI tool responded to user requests by “digitally undressing” people, including children.

The change appears to have occurred between Thursday and Friday. Grok’s X account responds to non-subscriber requests for images with the message: “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers,” and includes a link to subscribe.

But the restriction applies to just one way X users can interact with Grok. An “edit image” button on images uploaded to X allows any user to use Grok and edit the image. And image and video generation is still offered for free through Grok’s standalone website and app. The restriction appears to only apply to the feature where users tag Grok in an X post with a request, which Grok then complies with in a public X post.

CNN previously reported that in the weeks leading up to the trend exploding on X, Musk had expressed frustration over Grok Imagine’s guardrails in a meeting at xAi. Three key staffers of xAI’s safety team, including its head of product safety, also left the company in the weeks leading up to the controversy.

Officials in the United Kingdom, European Union, Malaysia and India have expressed concerns about Grok’s guardrails and how it leads to what many consider to be deepfake porn.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer slammed the latest move by X, saying it “simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images 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 app stores for violating the store’s distribution terms.

While the controversy over the digital undressing was at its height on X, the site’s leaders — including Musk and head of product Nikita Bier — boasted that X was experiencing some of its highest rates of engagement ever.

xAI also announced this week it had completed its Series E funding round, exceeding the $15 billion targeted round size and raising $20 billion from investors.

A spokesperson for X did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

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This story has been updated with additional content.