After creating thousands of “undressing” pictures of women and sexualized imagery of apparent minors, Elon Musk’s X has apparently limited who can generate images with Grok. However, despite the changes, the chatbot is still being used to create “undressing” sexualized images on the platform.

On Friday morning, the Grok account on X started responding to some users’ requests with a message saying that image generation and editing are “currently limited to paying subscribers.” The message also includes a link pushing people towards the social media platform’s $395 annual subscription tier. In one test of the system requesting Grok create an image of a tree, the system returned the same message.

The apparent change comes after days of growing outrage against and scrutiny of Musk’s X and xAI, the company behind the Grok chatbot. The companies face an increasing number of investigations from regulators around the world over the creation of nonconsensual explicit imagery and alleged sexual images of children. British prime minister Keir Starmer has not ruled out banning X in the country and said the actions have been “unlawful.”

Neither X nor xAI, the Musk-owned company behind Grok, has confirmed that it has made image generation and editing a paid-only feature. An X spokesperson acknowledged WIRED’s inquiry but did not provide comment ahead of publication. X has previously said it takes “action against illegal content on X,” including instances of child sexual abuse material. While Apple and Google have previously banned apps with similar “nudify” features, X and Grok remain available in their respective app stores. xAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

For more than a week, users on X have been asking the chatbot to edit images of women to remove their clothes—often asking for the image to contain a “string” or “transparent” bikini. While a public feed of images created by Grok contained far fewer results of these “undressing” images on Friday, it still created sexualized images when prompted to by X users with paid for “verified” accounts.

“We observe the same kind of prompt, we observe the same kind of outcome, just fewer than before,” Paul Bouchaud, lead researcher at Paris-based nonprofit AI Forensics, tells WIRED. “The model can continue to generate bikini [images],” they say.

A WIRED review of some Grok posts on Friday morning identified Grok generating images in response to user requests for images that “put her in latex lingerie” and “put her in a plastic bikini and cover her in donut white glaze.” The images appear behind a “content warning” box saying that adult material is displayed.

On Wednesday, WIRED revealed that Grok’s standalone website and app, which is separate from the version on X, has also been used in recent months to create highly graphic and sometimes violent sexual videos, including celebrities and other real people. Bouchaud says it is still possible to use Grok to make these videos. “I was able to generate a video with sexually explicit content without any restriction from an unverified account,” they say.

While WIRED’s test of image generation using Grok on X using a free account did not allow any images to be created, using a free account on Grok’s app and website still generated images.

The change on X could immediately limit the amount of sexually explicit and harmful material the platform is creating, experts say. But it has also been criticized as a minimal step that acts as a band-aid to the real harms caused by nonconsensual intimate imagery.

“The recent decision to restrict access to paying subscribers is not only inadequate—it represents the monetization of abuse,” Emma Pickering, head of technology-facilitated abuse at UK domestic abuse charity Refuge, said in a statement. “While limiting AI image generation to paid users may marginally reduce volume and improve traceability, the abuse has not been stopped. It has simply been placed behind a paywall, allowing X to profit from harm.”

As age-verification laws continue to dismantle the adult industry—and determine the future of free speech on the internet—a Utah lawmaker proposed a bill this week that would enforce a tax on porn sites that operate within the state.

Introduced by state senator Calvin Musselman, a Republican, the bill would impose a 7 percent tax on total receipts “from sales, distributions, memberships, subscriptions, performances, and content amounting to material harmful to minors that is produced, sold, filmed, generated, or otherwise based” in Utah. If passed, the bill would go into effect in May and would also require adult sites to pay a $500 annual fee to the State Tax Commission. Per the legislation, the money made from the tax will be used by Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services to provide more mental health support for teens.

Musselman did not respond to a request for comment.

A new age of American conservatism commands the political arena, and more US lawmakers are calling for additional restrictions on adult content. In September, Alabama became the first state to impose a porn tax on adult entertainment companies (10 percent) following the passage of age-verification mandates, which require users to upload an ID or other personal documentation to verify that they are not a minor before viewing sexually explicit content. Pennsylvania lawmakers are also eyeing a bill that would tax consumers an additional 10 percent on “subscriptions to and one-time purchases from online adult content platforms,” despite already requiring them to pay a 6 percent sales and use tax for the purchase of digital products, two state senators wrote in a memo in October. Other states have flirted with the idea of a porn tax in the past. In 2019, Arizona state senator Gail Griffin, a Republican, proposed taxing adult content distributors to help fund the border wall, a key priority during Donald Trump’s first presidential term. So far, 25 US states have passed a form of age verification.

Although efforts to criminalize participants in the sex work industry have been ongoing for years—with new regulations unfolding at a moment of heightened online surveillance and censorship—targeted taxes have failed to gain widespread approval because the legality around such laws are up for debate.

“This kind of porn tax is blatantly unconstitutional,” says Evelyn Douek, an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School. “It singles out a particular type of protected speech for disfavored treatment, purely because the legislature doesn’t like it—that’s exactly what the First Amendment is designed to protect against. Utah may not like porn, but as the Supreme Court affirmed only last year, adults have a fully protected right to access it.”

Utah, Alabama, and Pennsylvania are among the 16 states that have adopted resolutions declaring porn a public health crisis. “We realize this is a bold assertion not everyone will agree on, but it’s the full-fledged truth,” Utah governor Gary Herbert tweeted in 2016 after signing the resolution. One of Utah’s earliest statewide responses to the proliferation of adult content happened in 2001, when it became the first state to create an office for sexually explicit issues by hiring an obscenity and pornography complaints ombudsman. The position—dubbed the “porn czar”—was terminated in 2017.

“Age restriction is a very complex subject that brings with it data privacy concerns and the potential for uneven and inconsistent application for different digital platforms,” Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub, told WIRED in a previous conversation. In November, the company urged Google, Microsoft, and Apple to enact device-based verification in their app stores and across their operating systems. “We have seen several states and countries try to impose platform-level age verification requirements, and they have all failed to adequately protect children.” To comply with the new age gate mandates, Pornhub has currently blocked access to users in 23 states.

Hutchison Ports UK has completed the deployment of a private 5G network across the Port of Felixstowe, Harwich International Port and London Thamesport, creating what it claims is one of the most advanced industrial connectivity platforms in the country.

The Port of Felixstowe is the UK’s largest and busiest container port, with Harwich International and London Thamesport forming part of the same operational hub under the Hutchison Ports umbrella.

A key driver for the upgrade is Hutchison Ports’ major roll-out plan to introduce autonomous, electric trucks at the Port of Felixstowe, replacing a significant proportion of the existing diesel fleet. These vehicles demand continuous connectivity, very low latency for safe remote intervention, and the bandwidth to support multiple live video feeds when operators need to inspect a situation in detail.

The current 4G network, while extremely reliable for delivering work instructions to tablets in vehicle cabs, was never designed to handle these demands at scale.

The private 5G network is designed to provide the performance and predictability required for the next generation of autonomous operations.

Delivered by Three Group Solutions, it will provide “ultra-reliable”, high-capacity and low-latency connectivity to support large-scale automation, including autonomous trucks, remote-controlled cranes and data-rich applications that are central to the ports’ digital transformation plans.

By delivering a single private 5G network that spans all three sites, Three Group Solutions said it was strengthening the resilience and performance of critical national infrastructure while helping Hutchison Ports increase efficiency, enhance safety and support long-term sustainability objectives.

Upgrading the mission-critical communications in a live port environment required a carefully staged migration. Three Group Solutions designed and built the 5G network in parallel with the existing 4G system, using different blocks of radio spectrum so that both networks could operate side by side without interference. This allowed vehicles and machinery to be moved across in controlled phases, with performance monitored and optimised at each step.

“When you are dealing with the connectivity that keeps the country’s largest container port moving, you cannot simply turn one network off and another on,” said Graham Wilde, head of private networks at Three Group Solutions. “By running the 4G and 5G systems in parallel and moving assets in stages, we were able to deliver a smooth transition with no disruption to daily operations. 

“Automation in ports is not about putting people out of work,” he added. “It is about changing the jobs people do. Roles become safer, more varied and more attractive, which makes it easier to recruit and retain the talent ports need for the future.”

Working with a small number of specialist technology partners, Three Group Solutions delivered a scalable 5G architecture with dual cores, overlapping radio coverage and diverse links between the three ports. The network sits wholly within Hutchison Ports’ existing cyber security perimeter, and is engineered to maintain operations even if individual sites or towers are taken offline for maintenance, or in the event of a fault.

While autonomous horizontal transport is the first major application, the private 5G platform has also been designed to support a wide range of future use cases. Potential candidate applications being considered include extending remote control to more types of machinery, including cranes, deploying sensors for predictive maintenance, using drones for inspection and environmental monitoring, or integrating video analytics and real-time data into digital twins of port operations.

“The capability of the new network means that possibilities for the future are only really limited by the imagination of what could be done,” said Wilde. “Felixstowe, Harwich and Thamesport now have a dedicated 5G foundation for the next decade of innovation.

“This project shows how private 5G … can combine resilience, performance and flexibility at industrial scale, and we look forward to helping Hutchison Ports build on this success in the UK and beyond.”