X is rolling out two new Grok-powered features aimed at making the app more useful for both reading and posting: automatic translation for posts and a more capable in-app photo editor.
Auto-translate expands X’s global posting play
The translation feature is designed to reduce friction when users encounter posts in other languages.
According to TechCrunch, X head of product Nikita Bier said late Tuesday that automatic translation is rolling out worldwide and that users can tap the gear icon on a translated post to switch off auto-translation for a specific language.
In Bier’s words, the goal is to give posts in any language “global reach on X,” with translations powered by Grok that have “improved substantially over the last couple months.”
That move fits a broader platform strategy to keep users reading inside X rather than leaving the app to translate posts elsewhere.
Other social platforms have taken similar steps, pointing to Reddit’s experiments with machine translation over the last few years. In that sense, X is not inventing a new category here, but it is trying to fold language accessibility more tightly into its own AI stack.
X’s photo editor gets more useful — and more AI-driven
The bigger product shift may be in images.
X is rolling out a new image editor to its iOS app that includes drawing tools, text tools, and a blur function that can hide faces or sensitive details such as credit card numbers or Social Security numbers.
Engadget shared that the updated editor now supports AI edits powered by Grok as well as the ability to draw on images.
The most ambitious part of the update is natural-language editing.
Users can now ask Grok to modify an image with a plain-English prompt. One example the outlet gave was asking Grok to “display this photo as a painting in a museum,” after which the AI generates the edited version. X plans to bring the same photo editor updates to Android “soon.”
Grok becomes more central to X’s everyday features
These additions show X pushing Grok beyond chatbot status and deeper into routine product functions.
Instead of limiting Grok to a standalone assistant, X is using it as infrastructure for translations and media editing inside the main app experience. That matters because it turns Grok into something users may rely on without necessarily opening a separate AI window at all.
There is still an open question around who gets access to the AI image-editing feature.
X previously faced heavy criticism after Grok allowed users to turn other people’s images into sexualized versions without consent, prompting the company to later restrict image-generation features to paying users. It is not yet clear whether the new AI-powered image editing inside X’s photo tool will also be limited to paid users.
A more competitive in-app experience
Taken together, the rollout suggests X is trying to make its app more self-contained: easier to read across languages, easier to edit visuals before posting, and more dependent on Grok as the engine behind both.
Companies such as Google and Adobe already offer AI-powered editing tools based on text prompts, so X is entering a more crowded space rather than pioneering it.
But by tying translation and image editing directly to the core app, X appears to be betting that convenience — not just raw AI novelty — will keep users engaged longer.
