X Users Have the Power to Edit Any Image Without Permission

Elon Musk has announced a controversial new feature on his X platform, one that allows any user to edit any image without asking permission.

The feature doesn’t notify the person whose image is being edited, outraging some artists who have sworn they will stop uploading and leave the platform.

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.

While any picture posted on the internet can potentially be manipulated or edited with AI tools, the convenience of X’s latest feature is clearly a concern for photographers and artists who would rather that didn’t happen. Already, many of them have discussed deleting their work to prevent unauthorized changes.

Some users suggested uploading images as GIFs so that the Edit Image button doesn’t appear, but that also reduces the quality of the images. Tools like Nightshade and Glaze, developed to corrupt AI training data, does nothing to prevent this type of AI editing.

Grok is operated by xAI, which launched an image generator earlier this year. This was followed up by a tool that allowed users to turn any image into a video.