Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has said it imposed restrictions on all users of its Grok AI chatbot that limit image editing after the service produced sexualized images that sparked concerns among global regulators.

From Europe to Asia, governments and regulators are cracking down on the sexually explicit content generated by Grok, imposing bans and demanding safeguards in a growing global push to curb illegal material, a Reuters report said on January 14.

“We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis,” the company said in an X post, adding, “This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”

Hyper-realistic images of women manipulated to look like they were in microscopic bikinis, in degrading poses or covered in bruises began flooding social media platform X this month. In some cases, minors were digitally stripped down to swimwear, sparking broad criticism. Last week, Grok began allowing only paying subscribers to use its image generation and editing features.

X curtailed Grok’s ability to generate or edit images publicly for many of its users, but the chatbot still privately produced sexually charged images on demand on Wednesday before xAI’s announcement, Reuters found.

Billionaire Musk owns xAI, which in turn owns X, formerly known as Twitter.

On Wednesday, xAI added that it blocks users, based on their location, from generating images of people in skimpy attire in “jurisdictions where it’s illegal”. It did not identify those jurisdictions. More recently, X has said it treats reports of child sexual abuse material seriously and polices it vigorously.