GoKawiilOnce again, people are taking Grok at its word, treating the chatbot as a company spokesperson without questioning what it says.
On Friday morning, many outlets reported that X had blocked universal access to Grok’s image-editing features after the chatbot began prompting some users to pay $8 to use them. The messages are seemingly in response to reporting that people are using Grok to generate thousands of non-consensual sexualized images of women and children each hour.
“Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers,” Grok tells users, dropping a link and urging, “you can subscribe to unlock these features.”
However, as The Verge pointed out and Ars verified, unsubscribed X users can still use Grok to edit images. X seems to have limited users’ ability to request edits made by replying to Grok while still allowing image edits through the desktop site. App users can access the same feature by long-pressing on any image.
Using image-editing features without publicly prompting Grok keeps outputs out of the public feed. That means the only issue X has rushed to solve is stopping Grok from directly posting harmful images on the platform.
X declined to comment on whether it’s working to close those loopholes, but it has a history of pushing janky updates since Elon Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter. Still, motivated X users can also continue using the standalone Grok app or website to make abusive content for free.
Like images X users can edit without publicly asking Grok, these images aren’t posted publicly to an official X account but are likely to be shared by bad actors—some of whom, according to the BBC, are already promoting allegedly Grok-generated child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on the dark web. That’s especially concerning since Wired reported this week that users of the Grok app and website are generating far more graphic and disturbing images than what X users are creating.