Women’s Super League (WSL) Football, the organisation which oversees the top two tiers of women’s football in England, is monitoring developments with X’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool Grok due to concerns regarding its creation of sexualised images.
Some WSL clubs are also monitoring Grok, and another has said it has provided updated guidance to players and staff on safe use of all platforms, including X. Other teams are monitoring the evolving social media landscape and will take action accordingly.
Social media company X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, in January prevented Grok from being used to edit images of real people in revealing clothing after OFCOM, the UK’s independent regulator for the communications industries, launched an investigation in January. It follows concerns the AI tool was being used to create sexualised images, affecting women and children, including female athletes.
Signify, an organisation that works across multiple sports and with several WSL clubs to collect, triage and assess the threat online abuse poses to players, says it has been active on the Grok AI image manipulation issue since it first started in late 2025 and has shared advice with WSL and Premier League clubs on how to mitigate harm. But even though X has taken action, the issue is bigger than X and Grok.
“Similar off-platform image manipulation tools are available and we have seen them also being used to produce concerning images and videos,” Jonathan Sebire, co-founder at Signify, says. “This will be a live issue for some time to come.”
(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
OFCOM is not currently investigating the off-platform stand-alone version of Grok because they do not fall under the Online Safety Act in the same way as on-platform versions.
An OFCOM spokesperson told The Athletic: “We can only take action on online harms covered by the Online Safety Act, using the powers we have been granted. Any changes to these powers would be a matter for government and parliament. The Secretary of State has said that the Government will look at how AI services should be regulated and we are supporting that work.”
Signify has since added a solution which specifically detects manipulated images and reports them to X for action. “Encouragingly, we have seen the platform take strong action when dealing with content,” Sebire added.
In January, the European Commission announced it was launching an investigation against X under the Digital Services Act over Grok, including “the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images”.
In January, Arsenal deleted a video on X and turned comments off on an Instagram post of new signing Smilla Holmberg promoting ticket sales because of inappropriate, sexualised and misogynistic comments.
Tottenham Hotspur also turned comments off on their X post announcing the arrival of Matilda Nilden, 19, for the same reason. Some of the replies asked X’s artificial intelligence tool Grok to produce sexualised images of the player.
“It is really worrying,” Fern Whelan, women’s football equality, diversity and inclusion executive for the Professional Footballers’ Association, told The Athletic in a special investigation. “It’s difficult to manage unless it is stopped at source.”
The public body Sport England decided to stop using X last month to stay true to its values of ensuring “sport and physical activity are safe and inclusive for everyone,” it said in a statement.
WSL Football has already scaled back on the use of X, prioritising Instagram and TikTok instead and continues to monitor the situation regarding Grok.
“Online abuse is one of our highest priorities at the moment,” WSL Football Nikki Doucet told the media last month, urging the need to be proactive. “We have seen the speed in which and the change in the type of abuse that is happening. Some content is not illegal but there is a lot that is awful but lawful.”