X now lets any user AI-edit other users’ images without consent, and there is no opt out
A few days ago X introduced a new AI Image Editing button that lets any user modify images posted by others, even without the original uploader’s consent. Image owners are not notified when edits are made, and the feature is enabled by default with no opt-out option (at least not so far).
Any user can access an Edit Image button on standard image posts, which opens a prompt based interface powered by Grok and returns edits within seconds. The tool includes options for writing prompts, previewing results, and sharing the altered image across profile pages and the For You feed. The button appears on all profiles, regardless of whether they belong to regular users, verified accounts, or public figures.
The rollout has triggered backlash not only among artists and photographers, who see their copyrighted content being used and modified with little effort, but it has also affected thousands of regular users, especially women whose perfectly normal shared photos are being edited into suggestive or invasive scenarios without consent, which is an explicit violation of privacy.
So far, one suggested workaround is converting PNGs and JPGs into GIFs so they are less likely to be recognized by the AI, although nothing truly prevents photos from being downloaded and edited using an external service. We're just doomed I guess.
Comments
This new button is pretty much the same as saving or Copy-pasting the image into Gemini or other AI tools that lets you edit images.
People are giving this marketing stunt too much attention, and it works. Grok has been able to edit images for a long while but people doesn't know it, until now, just like how the Studio Ghibli cartoon style & the action figure buzz letting everyone know that ChatGPT & Gemini can edit images.
Who's it targeting though...? People who hate artist? I kinda feel these Tech Companies have just gotten so out of control normal people are powerless and their telling us that!
Gee, it's not like you couldn't do this even before AI and even Photoshop (the Dadaist cut apart photos and reassembled them to make fun of Hitler) it's that you can do it so easily and quickly. I mean if I can just make a new version of a photo in seconds (especially an image of a 12 year old ) eventually there should be questions about the morality of that.
Is it more morally problematic if it takes 10 seconds to edit a photo compared to a minute or two hours?
I guess it's morally problematic like a huge fricking machine gun is more morally problematic then a musket, but yeah in my opinion a device which just zaps off women's cloths, if I'm not going, "which ones will probably not mind if I do this and which one's are twelve," then I'm likelier to do something sh*tty. It's really not even the Technology itself, it's simply that's there may be less realizing as much of what their doing due to the User isn't being calculating about things or heavily thinking them out. Note when guns didn't fire as rapidly, people thought out their actions because you had to take your time. Now a days people are just blowing away each other's kids away right and left, not really the fault if the guns but rather people inability to take time to think things out when they're easy to do.
I used to take less time to comment because I wasn't thinking about what I said or checking my spelling, and it showed.
".. lets any user AI-edit other users’ images without consent …" So just like Photoshop?
You needed a great deal of skill to that with Photoshop (and probably it would be hard to undress a child) and you couldn't do it in seconds, meaning you couldn't undress every women you saw. And just to be clear, even computers you could photographic manipulations, just needed that right photos and skill with a cutting utensil.
Why can't I edit my comments?
Yes, the company in itself should have made an introduction about it. But really this is just old news. Your photos and everything is going to be fed to train an AI. Fight about it. If you upload your photos to facebook/instagram/twitter/reddit, hell sometime even chats, your photo is being used to train a model. And you cannot do anything about it. And those of you saying "AI steals out images and shit", fight those who made the AI scrape the internet. Find those who built the database with your image. Blame the mathematician and not the calculator.
This is not really an issue. You could do this before, and you can do it on any website, period. Just download the image (there are always ways to pull images cleanly, or if not you can screenshot).
I am very pro-privacy and heavily against doxing sharing private conversations, but if you are going to put something on the public internet, accept that it is now public forever.
There was a funny instance of a man who warned everyone not to put their images through AI, because it would capture their bio-markers. And someone else copied his profile picture, and ran it through AI and reposted as a comment.
Even for Samantha Smith's example of a photo being modified to be suggestive or invasive without her consent, there is NO NEED TO LINK TO AN X POST and further reward Musk's sociopathic shitshow of a "sans serif swastika" site. If a simple screenshot won't do, use Nitter. Replace the first "twitter" or "x" .com in the URL with "xcancel.com" or another Nitter instance:
https://xcancel.com/SamanthaTaghoy/status/2006732692315091392?s=20
(For videos, there's also twittervideodownloader.com.)
Very disrespectful to digital artist. I can imagine how people will misuse AI to recreate many copyrighted images or faking many news & deepfakes. What's going on with Elon's thinking?
He's a fascist, a techbro and a billionaire. He doesn't care about other's consent or boundaries, especially because he can get away with not doing so.