Elon Musk’s ex is understood to have told the government she is working to comply with UK law, following almost a fortnight of public outcry over the use of his AI tool Grok to manipulate images of women and children by stripping them of their clothes.
Keir Starmer told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the photos produced by Groke were “disgusting” and “shameful”, but said he had been informed that Axe was “working to ensure full compliance with UK law”.
“If yes, it is welcome,” the Prime Minister said. “But we are not going to back down. They have to take action. We will take the necessary steps. We will strengthen existing laws and prepare to legislate if necessary going forward, and Ofcom will continue its independent investigation.”
Media regulator Ofcom launched its investigation into X on Monday after a flood of sexual images appeared on Musk’s platform.
Government officials are understood to be talking to X, but ministers are monitoring the impact of the steps taken by the social media site. There is frustration that the guardrails that other AI providers have put in place to prevent such images from being created appear not to be being used by Grok.
“We are keeping a close eye on the situation,” Starmer said. He said this after a new poll revealed that 58% of Britons believe X should be banned in the UK if the platform does not ban AI-generated, non-consensual images. Common’s research also found that 60% believe UK ministers should opt out of AI, and 79% fear that misuse of AI is going to be a big problem.
In recent days,
Sharing non-consensual intimate images, such as those created by asking AI to dress people in underwear and bikinis and in sexual poses, is illegal under the Online Protection Act.
Last week, the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based watchdog, said it had seen users on a dark web forum claiming to be using the Grok app to create sexually explicit and topless images of girls aged between 11 and 13.
On Wednesday, Musk said he was “not aware of any nude underage images created by Grok. Literally zero.”
“Apparently, Grok does not generate images automatically, it only does so according to user requests,” he wrote in an X post. “When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to follow the laws of any country or state. There may be times when adversary hacking of Grok signals does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”
Meanwhile, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall reiterated criticism of XAI – the company that owns X and Grok – over the decision to limit Grok’s image creation and editing functions to paying customers, calling it “yet another insult to the victims, effectively monetising this terrible crime”.
In a letter to MPs on the Commons select committee for science, innovation and technology, he said a blanket ban on AI-enabled nudification tools would apply to “applications that have only one nefarious purpose: using generative AI to turn images of real people into fake nude pictures and videos without their permission”.
But committee chairman Chi Onwuruh has criticized the government’s slowness in enforcing the ban given that “reports of these disturbing grok deepfakes emerged in August 2025”.
He added that it is “unclear whether this ban – which appears to be limited to apps whose sole function is to create nude photos – will cover multi-purpose tools like Grok”.
