Elon Musk’s ex has been ordered by the UK government to tackle a wave of pornographic AI images or face an actual ban, as an expert said the platform is no longer a “safe space” for women.
Media watchdog Ofcom has confirmed it will step up its investigation of X as the backlash grows against the site, which has hosted a flood of images depicting partially nude women and children.
Ax announced a ban on creating images through the Grok AI tool on Friday morning in response to a global outcry. A post on the platform said the ability to create and edit images will now be “restricted to paying customers”. Those paying must provide personal details, meaning they can be identified if the function is abused.
However, the move failed to quell anger and deepened the backlash from victims, politicians and experts who said it did not go far enough.
Claire Waxman, the government’s new commissioner for victims of crime, said the platform was hindering efforts to tackle violence against women and girls. Meanwhile, Downing Street said Ax’s attempt to downplay the controversy by only allowing paid users to generate AI images was insulting.
Waxman told the Guardian that X is no longer a safe space for victims and that his office is considering reducing its presence on the site and focusing its communications on Instagram.
“It makes the fight against violence against women and girls that much more difficult when platforms like X are enabling abuse on such an easy and routine basis,” Waxman said. He said the platform was having a negative impact on the mental health of its users due to the spread of violence, abuse and racial hatred.
Grok has been integrated into
With a growing number of MPs and organizations fleeing X, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall promised on Friday that ministers are seriously considering the possibility of restricting access to X in the UK.
Kendall said he expected Ofcom, which said this week it was demanding immediate answers from the platform, to announce action within “days rather than weeks”.
“X needs to get a grip and get this stuff down,” she said. “And I would remind them that in the Online Safety Act, there are backstop powers for people in the UK to block access to services if they refuse to follow the law. And if Ofcom decides to use those powers, they will have the full support of the Government.”
In a statement, Ofcom said it had contacted Ax on Monday and set a “firm deadline” of Friday for the site to explain itself, adding: “We are now carrying out a rapid assessment as a matter of urgency and will provide further updates shortly.”
Under the Online Safety Act the regulator can force platforms to deal with such content and issue fines of several million pounds for lack of compliance, with the ultimate sanction being a court order for web providers to block a site or app entirely.
X has been contacted for comment. Musk had previously stressed that “anyone using Grok to create illegal content will face the same consequences as if they had uploaded illegal content”.
Musk responded to an X user’s post about the UK government’s threat, saying: “They want any excuse for censorship.”
Pressure has increased on ministers in recent days to take action over the large number of images created by Grok, as users on X has about 300 million monthly users, according to data company SimilarWeb. US firm AppFigure estimates the number of paying X customers at between 2.2 million and 2.6 million.
Asked about the change to who can create images on X, a Downing Street spokesperson said it was unacceptable. “This move simply turns an AI feature that allows illegal images to be created into a premium service,” he said.
“This is not a solution. In fact, it is misogyny and an insult to the victims of sexual violence. It proves that
Victims of the AI stripping craze, which involved using Grok to photograph women in bikinis on a large scale, told the Guardian that the partial climbdown had come too late.
Karolina Wozniak, 20, from Hamburg, who had manipulated personal images to appear in sexually objectionable positions, said she found it “terrible” that photos of her partially clothed could still circulate online. She added, “This whole thing is a huge threat to women. We shouldn’t be afraid to share our photos online.”
Broadcaster Narinder Kaur, 53, who created sexually explicit and racially offensive content using Grok and shared it on X, said the new ban on creating images is not a victory.
“As victims of this abuse, it appears that those who paid for Premium
While government sources say every option is on the table, including leaving the department and the Downing Street platform, privately, the Prime Minister’s aides have rejected the idea of Ax leaving, saying he is more likely to get change from Musk business through public pressure and Ofcom.
However, an increasing number of MPs have moved to other social media sites. Labor Party chair Anna Turley told the BBC on Friday that while no action had yet been taken by the government to drop the Ax, individual ministers were considering doing so.
The Liberal Democrats called on Ofcom to immediately stop X from operating in the UK and for the National Crime Agency to launch a criminal investigation into the site.
There has been an exodus of women sector organizations from X. Domestic abuse charity Refuge has left the site, as has Women’s Aid Ireland. Victim Support, which left X in April, said it was “no longer the right place to communicate with our audience”.
Requests to “put her in a bikini” from non-paying subscribers on X on Friday prompted a response from the Grok account that “image creation and editing is currently limited to paying subscribers”. But the chatbot was also refusing to generate certain erotic images of women in bikinis in response to requests from premium customers.
A paying customer whose original request that a photo of a 55-year-old woman be wearing a bikini be superseded was ignored: “@GrokCompliance I’m a paying customer”. The chatbot responded with an image of a different, much younger woman in a bikini.
Although requests to put women in bikinis were no longer routinely fulfilled, the chatbot was still accepting requests from paid customers to put photos of men in bikinis. A request to have Keir Starmer wear a Union Jack string bikini outside Buckingham Palace has been granted.
Researchers said that on the Grok app, where content is not immediately visible to other Internet users, the chatbot was still generating instant images of women and children in bikinis.
