X limits sexualized AI deepfakes to paying customers

The move comes after the United Kingdom threatened to take government action against the social media platform.

By Drew Gillis  |  January 9, 2026 | 9:33am
Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images
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X limits sexualized AI deepfakes to paying customers

This hasn’t been a particularly calm or stable week, politically speaking, so you’d be forgiven for missing the latest saga playing out on X (née Twitter). Scrutiny over the everything app’s in-house AI program, Grok, reached something of a tipping point in these first few days of 2026. The AI image generator has been able to generate sexualized, nearly-nude images of celebrities for months and been able to “remove” the clothes from images uploaded to the server. Obviously (but no less distressingly) this has led to X users widely sharing “declothed” images of minors and others in vulnerable positions. (Social media reporter Kat Tenbarge reported seeing the dead body of Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by ICE in Minnesota, edited into a bikini within a day of her killing.) Various governments and observers have condemned this, and X has finally done something about it, kind of. 

This morning, Grok has been responding to users asking for photo edits (whether sexual in nature or not) with “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.” Of course, this doesn’t mean that they’ve been removed, just that they have to be paid for, nor does it even mean that this will be the case permanently. 

The move comes after United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer became possibly the highest-profile person to condemn the deepfakes. “It’s disgraceful, it’s disgusting, and it’s not to be tolerated,” the PM said in a TV interview on Thursday, per Politico. “X has got to get a grip of this, and [UK communication regulator] Ofcom has our full support to take action in relation to this.” BBC director general Tim Davie also said that the broadcaster was also facing significant pressure to remove its presence from X, though affirmed its intention to stay on the platform, per Deadline.

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