Musk’s X Probed By UK Over Grok’s Thousands Of Sexualised Images
X declined to comment on the probe, but has said in recent days that it takes action against illegal content by removing it and suspending accounts.
UK regulators have opened a probe into Elon Musk’s X as backlash mounts worldwide over the thousands of sexually suggestive images generated by the artificial intelligence tool Grok on the social media platform.
The UK communications regulator Ofcom said Monday that is formally investigating whether X, a subsidiary of xAI, breached the nation’s Online Safety Act, potentially exposing the platform to fines or restrictions on its service. X declined to comment on the probe, but has said in recent days that it takes action against illegal content by removing it and suspending accounts.
Nations including the UK, France and India have condemned xAI’s Grok chatbot, accusing it of illegally creating sexualized images of people without their consent. The US and Japan are by far X’s largest markets by active users, followed by Indonesia, India and the UK, according to the data and analytics provider DataReportal. The governments of the three latter nations have now all chastised xAI, with Indonesia going as far as to temporarily block access to Grok. The US has yet to meaningfully weigh in.
Grok is designed with fewer guardrails than other mainstream AI tools. A feature recently added allows users to undress people’s photos, posing them in underwear and other provocative wear. Grok users have now created thousands of non-consensual, sexually suggestive images of children and women on X by some estimates.
It’s illegal in the UK to own or share any sexual images of children, and to share intimate footage of people without consent, including material generated by AI.
Business Secretary Peter Kyle on Monday told Times Radio that the government “of course” would consider banning X, but that the law requires ministers to let the regulator do its job.
X users can interact with Grok directly on the platform by tagging its account in posts and prompting the chatbot to respond. Grok generates text and images that appear as posts on the social network. After users flooded the tool with requests to “undress” people, xAI began restricting the image-generation tool to paid users on X, though it was still free on the standalone Grok app.
Musk also this month posted a warning that anyone using Grok to make illegal content would “suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
The sexual content on Grok generated widespread condemnation from governments and regulators this month.
Malaysia joined Indonesia in temporarily blocking the tool over the weekend.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said xAI limiting Grok’s image generation capabilities to paid users on X didn’t go far enough. The restriction “simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service: It’s not a solution,” Starmer’s spokesman Geraint Ellis told reporters in a briefing on Friday. “It’s insulting the victims of misogyny and sexual violence. What it does prove is that X can move swiftly when it wants to do so.”
The Internet Watch Foundation, a body designated by the UK government to identify child sexual abuse material, said it found “criminal” images of children on the dark web allegedly generated by Grok.
The European Union’s executive arm ordered X to retain internal documents relating to Grok until the end of the year. The EU had condemned some of the explicit images of children on the platform as illegal.
The French government has accused Grok of generating “clearly illegal” sexual content on X without consent, flagging the matter as potentially violating the EU’s Digital Services Act. The regulation requires large platforms to mitigate the risk of illegal content spreading.
