Elon Musk’s social media platform X has restricted its Grok AI image features to paying subscribers only, following a massive wave of “nudified” deepfakes that prompted the UK government to openly weigh a total ban on the service.
The crisis erupted this week after reports revealed that users were using Grok’s “Edit Image” tool to digitally remove the clothing of real people at a staggering scale, which included minors and public figures. Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips branded the trend “an absolute disgrace,” warning that the government will soon become the first in the world to make it a criminal offense to even possess AI tools designed to generate child abuse material.
According to The Guardian, the UK’s Online Safety Act already makes it a crime to share AI-generated intimate images without consent, a second layer of defense is currently in a state of “legislative limbo.
In a direct response to the pressure, xAI has restricted image generation to Premium accounts and introduced “hard-coded” blocks on prompts involving “states of undress.” Despite these patches, child safety watchdog IWF reports that “indecent pseudo-photographs” of children have already been discovered on dark-web forums, traced back to Grok’s earlier, more permissive filters.
Under UK GDPR, victims have an immediate legal right to demand the erasure of manipulated images, as they constitute a breach of personal data. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed it will escalate enforcement if X fails to process these “Right to Be Forgotten” requests within 72 hours.
