X (Twitter) adds a button to edit other people’s images with Grok—following the app, now on the web too

On the web version of X (Twitter), a button has been added that allows images to be edited using xAI’s AI, “Grok,” regardless of whether the image was posted by you or by someone else.

A feature has been added to edit images with Grok

On the web version of X, a button has been added that lets you edit an image attached to a post with Grok, regardless of whether it is an image you posted or an image posted by someone else.

In X’s mobile app, by at least April of this year, a feature had already been implemented that allowed you to edit images attached to posts using Grok via the menu that appears when you press and hold the image.

For that reason, the ability to edit images attached to posts with Grok is not new.

In the mobile app, it could only be accessed from the press-and-hold menu for an image, making it hard to notice. By contrast, on the web version, the button now appears simply by hovering the mouse over the image, so the number of users who take advantage of it may increase.

By the way, X has recently revised its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and among some users a rumor has spread that it is no longer possible to refuse having posts on X used for AI training, but this is not true.

To begin with, the new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy will take effect on January 15, 2026, so they are unrelated to the implementation of this feature.

Can I prevent your images from being edited with Grok?

As of the time of writing, there is no provided way to prevent images you have posted from being edited with Grok by other people.

It seems that the only thing you can do is to “ask” people not to edit your images with Grok, such as by writing so in your profile bio.

If a setting is implemented to prevent images from being edited with Grok, the article is planned to be updated.

Are there legal issues?

If you edit someone else’s image with Grok, will legal issues arise?

Personally, the author’s stance is: “Editing someone else’s image with Grok is probably not a problem, but it is not recommended because it could lead to trouble.”

X’s Terms of Service state the following:

you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display, upload, download, and distribute such Content, including anything referenced therein, in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed, for any purpose

——From X Terms of Service

This means that users are granting X the rights to modify and distribute their own content, as well as the right to sublicense.

A sublicense refers to a situation where the party that has received a license grants a license further to another party.

In this case, it refers to X granting permission to people other than you to modify or distribute your content.

This sublicensing mechanism is necessary so that ordinary users—who have not received permission directly from you—can repost your posts or embed them on other websites.

If you assume that this sublicense also applies to the feature that edits images with Grok, then users are (indirectly) permitting their own content to be edited with Grok by other users.

That said, some people may not want their content to be edited by others, so it would be safest to avoid editing other people’s images with Grok.