Elon Musk-owned social media platform X may face a ban in Britain following a controversy surrounding its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. The move
comes after widespread use of Grok to generate sexually explicit images of women and children.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the incident as disgraceful and unacceptable, saying such content would not be tolerated. He stressed that the platform must take responsibility and rein the situation in, adding that media regulator Ofcom has the government’s full backing to act.
"It's disgraceful, it's disgusting, and it's not to be tolerated. X has got to get a grip of this, and Ofcom has our full support to take action in relation to this," he told Greatest Hits Radio, adding, "This is wrong, it's unlawful, we're not going to tolerate it. I've asked for all options to be on the table. We will take action on this because it is simply not tolerable."
Ofcom confirmed that it made urgent contact with X, the company behind Grok and xAI, which is reportedly investigating the matter
Sources in 10 Downing Street told The Telegraph that the government could use the full powers of the Online Safety Act. This law allows regulators to impose massive fines running into billions of pounds on tech companies that fail to stop illegal and harmful content.
Grok was used to generate pictures in which women and children were digitally undressed, including sexualised poses or people in bikinis. The photos came to notice after a UK internet watchdog found some of these AI-generated images on a dark web forum.
Also Read: Elon Musk's AI chatbot faces global backlash over sexualised images of women, children
Users were also seen openly promptly Grok to morph photographs into sexually compromising images which were then shared without consent.
AI Forensics, a non-profit organisation, carried out an investigation into images created by Grok and discovered that 20,000 images were generated over a one-week period December 25 and January 1. About 2% of them showed people who appeared to be 18 years old or younger.
In addition to this, around 30 images showed young or very young women or girls, in bikinis or transparent clothes.
Last year, UK Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told Members of Parliament that existing online safety laws in the UK do not fully cover generative AI chatbots like Grok, which can create images, text, or videos. She said the government was considering whether new laws might be needed to regulate these AI tools.
Kendall this week demanded that X take immediate action to address the issue, describing the situation as extremely serious.
"We refuse to tolerate this degrading and harmful behaviour, which is why we have also introduced legislation to ban their creation without consent," said the Ministry of Justice.
The platform has about 650 million users globally, with around 20 million users in the UK. X is banned in several countries, including China, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brazil, North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan and Venezuela.
