It is unclear whether heavy criticism of Grok’s ability to make sexualised deepfakes of people is the reason for the restriction or whether it’s pressure on Grok’s servers from its sudden rise in usage
Grok, the AI engine under fire for publicly undressing women and minors, has begun to restrict the controversial feature to paid subscribers of the service.
“Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers,” the Grok account on X told one user today who asked for a picture of a woman to be “put in a bikini”.
The same response was given to someone who asked the engine to create an image of Cristiano Ronaldo’s young daughter.
The move comes after Grok’s servers appeared to strain under the weight of extra traffic. The Grok app rose to the top of the app charts in Ireland and other countries this week. Grok is also free to use online and on the social media platform X.
It is unclear whether the restriction comes because of controversy over the feature from regulators and politicians or whether it was imposed for technical reasons.
“Heavy usage growth of Grok is causing occasional slowdowns in responses,” said Elon Musk in a post on X overnight.
“Additional computers are being brought online as I type this.”
The Irish Independent has approached X for comment.
However, the ability to generate images still appears to be active to free users with the Grok app, the Irish Independent has confirmed.
Grok and X have attracted criticism from officials such as Taoiseach Micheal Martin and UK prime minister Keir Starmer after it became clear that it would create sexualised deepfake images of people, including minors, upon request, both within its standalone app and publicly online and on the X social media platform.
Regulators and ministers in Ireland are currently scrambling to decide what to do about the situation or who should take a lead.
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