Elon Musk’s social media platform X is now staring down the very real prospect of being blocked in the UK within days, after the government made clear it will fully support Ofcom if the company continues to flout the law. At the centre of the storm is Grok, Musk’s in-built AI tool, which has been used to generate sexualised deepfake images – including of children – with little more than a casual prompt beneath a photograph.
Ministers are no longer pretending this is a misunderstanding or a technical glitch. Downing Street has openly described X’s latest response as “insulting” to victims of misogyny and sexual violence, while charities have gone further, accusing the platform of actively monetising abuse.
The issue erupted after Grok was found to be digitally “undressing” people without their consent when tagged under images posted on X. Instead of removing the functionality entirely, X responded by limiting image editing to paying subscribers. In other words, the abuse was not stopped – it was put behind a paywall.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has now warned xAI, the Musk-owned company behind Grok and X, that the government expects Ofcom to use its “full legal powers” under the Online Safety Act. Those powers include seeking court orders to block services in the UK or to prevent third parties from helping X raise money or remain accessible.
“I would remind xAI that the Online Safety Act includes the power to block services from being accessed in the UK, if they refuse to comply with UK law,” Kendall said, adding that if Ofcom decides to act, it will have the government’s “full support”. She also made clear that an update is expected in “days, not weeks”.
Ofcom has already moved. The regulator confirmed it made urgent contact with X earlier this week, setting a firm deadline for the company to explain itself. That response has now been received, and an expedited assessment is under way. Further updates are imminent.
Despite X quietly restricting some Grok features, the AI can still edit images through other parts of the platform, as well as via its standalone app and website. The government has noted that this proves X can act quickly when it chooses to – it simply has not chosen to act responsibly.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said it was now “abundantly clear that X needs to act and needs to act now”, comparing the situation to a media company displaying unlawful images on billboards and refusing to take them down. In any other industry, such behaviour would already have triggered decisive enforcement.
Legal experts and campaigners are unimpressed by Musk’s theatrics. Professor Clare McGlynn, a leading authority on the regulation of pornography and online abuse, accused Musk of “throwing his toys out of the pram” at the idea of being held to account. Rather than building in safeguards to prevent abuse, she said, X had simply withdrawn access for most users while continuing to enable harm elsewhere.
The Internet Watch Foundation has warned that limiting access does nothing to undo the damage already caused. Its analysts have identified criminal imagery of girls aged between 11 and 13 that appears to have been generated using Grok. “Sitting and waiting for unsafe products to be abused before taking action is unacceptable,” said the charity’s head of policy, Hannah Swirsky.
Women targeted by the technology have described feeling humiliated and dehumanised as Grok was used to strip them of clothing in doctored images. Dr Daisy Dixon, a lecturer at Cardiff University, said the changes felt like “a sticking plaster” and called for a complete redesign of the system with ethical guardrails built in from the start. She described the episode as yet another instance of gender-based violation that Musk has failed to properly acknowledge.
Charities working to end violence against women have been scathing. Refuge described X’s move as “the monetisation of abuse”, arguing that placing harm behind a paywall still allows the company to profit from it. The End Violence Against Women coalition said it had little confidence that X would take meaningful action given its long record of dragging its heels.
Political pressure is now mounting. Liberal Democrat MPs have formally called on Ofcom to restrict access to X while investigations continue, arguing that no other platform facilitating the mass generation of sexual abuse imagery would be allowed to operate uninterrupted. Downing Street has reiterated that a ban remains firmly on the table.
Keir Starmer has already described the images generated by Grok as “disgraceful” and “disgusting”, while senior Conservatives have also condemned the abuse as “absolutely abhorrent”. On this issue, there is rare cross-party agreement: X has crossed a line.
What happens next depends largely on whether Elon Musk is willing to behave like an adult running a global communications platform, rather than a billionaire child lashing out when told “no”. The UK has laws designed to protect people from exactly this kind of harm. If Musk refuses to comply, ministers have made clear they are prepared to pull the plug.
X can fix this. Or it can be switched off. The choice – and the consequences – are now his.
