Worth Reading – X Users Have the Power to Edit Any Image Without Permission
Lest you think X is anything but the trash company you’ve heard about:
In the video shared by Musk above, an X user adds two children to a photo of a couple. It is done simply by hovering over an image and the ‘Edit Image’ icon appears at the bottom right corner. The image then appears with a text box beneath it. Users can just type in whatever change they want to see to the images and the AI model Grok returns it in seconds. Creative Bloq notes that the feature is on by default — there is no way to opt out of it.
https://petapixel.com/2025/12/29/x-users-have-the-power-to-edit-any-image-without-permission/
Two things come to my mind:
- We know that social media companies have claimed vague “ownership” of content posted on their platforms. Apologists have argued that it is necessary to permit them to display it across the network. This goes way beyond that, but likely is in line with the fact that by posting that photo on X, you granted them ownership of it. If Elon wants to make it available for Grok to edit, however your trolling little heart desires, that’s his prerogative. This was always going to be the end game for any content posted to a social media platform owned by a company also desperate to develop AI tools. (All of them, BTW.)
- Should we start a pool on the first Grok-produced image harassment case to hit the courts? Will it be simple harassment, or will it involve CSAM, revenge porn, etc.? There’s no way this doesn’t get misused, and Elon knows it. He doesn’t care.
This is why the US, rather than blocking AI regulation, needs a very long, very adult discussion of where the guardrails for AI should be. Until we’re willing to do that, innocent people will continue to be harmed. As long as there has been the internet, people have grabbed photos and altered them. That ability has always been misused, and the legal system has struggled to keep up. This is on another level, making it ridiculously easy to do and inviting people to do it. As I said, this kind of tool is perfect for trolling and will make X a worse place to be, if that’s possible.
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