{"id":370259,"date":"2026-01-14T23:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370259\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T23:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:43:08","slug":"x-acting-to-comply-with-uk-law-after-outcry-over-sexualised-images-grok-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370259\/","title":{"rendered":"X \u2018acting to comply with UK law\u2019 after outcry over sexualised images | Grok AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk\u2019s X is understood to have told the government it is acting to comply with UK law, after nearly a fortnight of public outcry at the use of its AI tool Grok<\/a> to manipulate images of women and children<\/a> by removing their clothes.<\/p>\n

Keir Starmer told the House of Commons on Wednesday that photographs generated by Grok were \u201cdisgusting\u201d and \u201cshameful\u201d, but said he had been informed that X was \u201cacting to ensure full compliance with UK law\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf so, that is welcome,\u201d the prime minister said. \u201cBut we are not going to back down. They must act. We will take the necessary measures. We will strengthen existing laws and prepare for legislation if it needs to go further, and Ofcom will continue its independent investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ofcom, the media regulator, launched its investigation into X on Monday<\/a> after a deluge of sexual images appeared on Musk\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n

Government officials are understood to have been speaking with X<\/a>, but ministers are monitoring the impact of the steps taken by the social media site. There is frustration that guardrails other AI providers have put in place to prevent such images being created appear not to be used by Grok.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are keeping a close watch on the situation,\u201d Starmer said. He spoke as new polling showed 58% of Britons believe X should be banned in the UK if the platform doesn\u2019t crack down on AI-generated, nonconsensual images. More in Common\u2019s research also found 60% believe UK ministers should come off X, and 79% fear AI misuse is set to become a bigger problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"MuskMusk v Starmer: will UK ban X over Grok nudification? | The Latest<\/p>\n

In recent days, X is understood to have restricted<\/a> the @grok account, which many users have been asking to partially undress celebrities and others, so it no longer generates images of real people in revealing clothing.<\/p>\n

The sharing of nonconsensual intimate images, such as those created by asking an AI to put people in underwear and bikinis and in sexual poses, is illegal under the Online Safety Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last week, the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based watchdog, said it had seen users on a dark web forum boasting of using the Grok app to create sexualised and topless imagery of girls<\/a> aged between 11 and 13.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Musk said<\/a> he was \u201cnot aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests,\u201d he wrote in an X post. \u201cWhen asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state. There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, renewed her criticism of xAI \u2013 the company that owns X and Grok \u2013 over its decision to limit Grok\u2019s image generation and editing functions to paying subscribers, calling it \u201ca further insult to victims, effectively monetising this horrific crime\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a letter to MPs on the Commons select committee for science, innovation and technology, she said a wider ban on AI-enabled nudification tools \u201cwill apply to applications that have one despicable purpose only: to use generative AI to turn images of real people into fake nude pictures and videos without their permission\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the committee chair, Chi Onwuruh, has criticised the government\u2019s slowness in applying the ban given \u201creports of these disturbing Grok deepfakes appeared in August 2025\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said it was \u201cunclear whether this ban \u2013 which appears to be limited to apps that have the sole function of generating nude images \u2013 will cover multipurpose tools like Grok\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s X is understood to have told the government it is acting to comply with UK law,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-370259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}