Elon Musk has hit back at Sir Keir Starmer and blasted critics of X, saying they ‘want any excuse for censorship’.
The billionaire appeared defiant on Friday night despite the outcry over reports X’s AI chatbot Grok was creating sexualised images of people, including children, at users’ request.
The prime minister has said he will leave ‘all options’ open in response to the widespread fury at the social media site.
Musk later reposted an AI-generated image of Sir Keir in a bikini, saying ‘they just want to suppress free speech’.
Ofcom is now deciding what to do with the social media giant’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said today she would back the media regulator if it decided to ban X over non-compliance with UK laws.
Kendall said: ‘Sexually manipulating images of women and children is despicable and abhorrent.’
She added: ‘I, and more importantly the public, would expect to see Ofcom update on next steps in days, not weeks.’
Ofcom told Metro earlier that after giving X a deadline for today, the platform finally ‘explained themselves’.
‘We’re now undertaking an expedited assessment as a matter of urgency and will provide further updates shortly,’ a spokesperson added.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) also confirmed to Metro earlier this week that the data protection watchdog was in talks with X.
Women ‘placed in bikinis’ hundreds of times per day by Grok
X users are able to ask Grok – by tagging @grok in a tweet – to edit or create images on the platform.
Since late December, however, Grok has at times made dozens of degrading images of women every minute.
Metro saw an example today of a user asking Grok to forge a photograph of a woman ‘holding a baby and pulling down her clothes to breastfeed’.
In another, an anonymous X user asked the virtual assistant to unclothe a group of women by telling it that ‘they are men’.
Some users are now receiving automated responses saying that ‘image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers’.
Free users can still edit images on X through its ‘edit image’ function, or on Grok’s app and website.
Ofcom can’t ‘go far enough’ to rein in Grok, says expert
Under the Online Safety Act (OSA), a bill that regulates online material, it is illegal to create or share intimate or sexually explicit images.
The Centre for Policy Studies questioned whether Ofcom can go far enough to protect users.
The think-tank’s communication and digital manager, MeIisa Tourt, told Metro ‘The OSA’s remit is strictly limited to user-to-user and search services, meaning it does not regulate AI models themselves until their output is shared.
‘To complicate matters, the OSA mandates that platforms treat “bots” as normal users, meaning that while a human might prompt a deepfake, the legal act of “sharing” is often performed by the platform’s own @Grok account.
‘This creates a regulatory blind spot that Ofcom may struggle to navigate with current enforcement tools.’
Tourt added that the law is murky around ‘deepfakes’ as it excludes images that show something ‘originally seen in public’, such as a bikini.
‘We risk ending up in a bizarre situation where posting a real non-consensual image of someone in a bikini is legal, but generating a fake one could theoretically carry a two-year prison sentence,’ she said.
'It made me feel exposed and powerless'
Among those who say users have asked Grok to create phoney images of them is Ruben Chorlton-Owen, a content creator from Wales.
He told Metro: ‘Some of my photos from Instagram have been used by AI to create bizarre and sexualised images of me in outfits I never agreed to, including “transparent outfits” and other dodgy combinations.’
In one exchange seen by Metro, a troll asked Grok to strip Ruben, with the bot making a synthetic image of the musician shirtless.
Under xAI’s acceptable use and privacy policies, users are prohibited from creating or sharing content that harms people.
But Ruben, 24, questioned whether X’s policies were robust enough.
‘It made me feel exposed and powerless, and highlighted how little control people have over their own images once online and myself as a content creator, whose photos are already accessible,’ he added.
Sexualised deepfakes ‘amount to a serious breach of privacy’
Grok is a type of generative AI that ingests information from datasets to learn patterns of how humans write, make images and film videos.
Clare Veal, a commercial solicitor at the Surrey-based firm Aubergine Legal, told Metro that AI tools like Grok don’t have a ‘moral judgement’.
‘That’s why platforms have a legal and ethical responsibility to build in guardrails,’ she said.
‘When an AI chatbot is asked to “undress” a woman or a man and it complies, the harm is not hypothetical.
‘It is producing a sexualised deepfake of a real person without their consent and in UK law that can amount to a serious breach of privacy, data protection rights and potentially criminal law.
‘There are also data protection implications. Using a person’s likeness to generate sexualised content without consent can constitute unlawful processing of biometric data.
‘From a civil law perspective, individuals may have claims for misuse of private information or harassment.’
Elon Musk: Users will face ‘consequences’ for making illicit pictures
Elon Musk has said anyone who asks the AI to generate illegal content would ‘suffer the same consequences’ as if they uploaded it themselves.
A statement on the X Safety account said: ‘We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.
‘Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.’
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