Good morning. Last week, the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said: “We cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these demeaning and degrading images, which are disproportionately aimed at women and girls.” Her words came in reaction to the growing scandal of Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool being used to digitally undress photos of women and children to create public deepfaked sexualised images of them without their consent.
The row rumbled on through the weekend, with the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, telling the Guardian on Saturday that JD Vance, the US vice-president, agreed that the proliferation of AI-generated sexualised images of women and children was “entirely unacceptable”. Other government ministers insisted a ban on X was a possibility and Musk fired back that “they just want to suppress free speech”.
What makes it all so disturbing is not just the scale of the abuse but how quickly it moved from fringe behaviour to something visible, searchable and effectively normalised on one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. Within days, Grok had become a tool not just for humiliation and harassment of women, but for the creation of imagery that child protection groups say meets the legal definition of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
For today’s newsletter I spoke to the Guardian’s global technology editor, Dan Milmo, to discover how the scandal developed, what – if anything – politicians can do to prevent these kinds of images being made, and what it tells us about the broader technology and internet landscape in 2026. Before that, here are Monday’s headlines.
Five big stories
Iran | Iran has warned the US not to attack in support of protests that have rocked the country, with hundreds killed, as Donald Trump weighed the options for a response from Washington.
Politics | David Lammy has suggested the court backlog of nearly 80,000 trials could be cleared in a decade if parliament agrees to slash the number that require a jury.
Europe | The EU is reportedly demanding guarantees the UK will compensate the bloc if a future government reneges on the Brexit “reset” agreement that Keir Starmer is negotiating, with diplomats calling it the “Farage clause”.
Cuba | Donald Trump has told Cuba to “make a deal” or face unspecified consequences, adding that no more Venezuelan oil or money would flow to the communist-run Caribbean island that has been a US foe for decades.
Cryptocurrency | Downing Street has been urged to ban all political donations in cryptocurrency in the forthcoming elections bill amid concern that it could be used by foreign states to influence politics.
In depth: ‘AI is testing the boundaries of law and ethics’
“I felt horrified, I felt violated, especially seeing my toddler’s backpack in the back of it,” Ashley St Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons, said of an image of her as a child in which the AI had put her into a bikini, turned around and bent over.
Dan tells me: “What you’re seeing here is a very familiar Silicon Valley story – move fast and break things. A powerful new technology is pushed out at speed with weak or untested safeguards because the priority is growth, attention and beating rivals to market. Only once the damage becomes impossible to ignore do the companies start talking seriously about safety.”
Which is what happened when X decided to block non-paying users from Grok’s image generation tool on Friday, stopping a large portion of the abuse. It was a move described by Downing Street spokesperson as unacceptable. “The move simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service,” they said.
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How did the Grok AI scandal erupt?
The trend for making the sexualised public images had, Dan says, a kind of “meme-y trollish” quality to it, and “really snowballed over Christmas”. Content analysis firm Copyleaks reported on 31 December that X users were collectively generating “roughly one nonconsensual sexualised image per minute”, often directly in reply to women who had posted perfectly safe-for-work images of themselves on the platform.
Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analysed by PhD researcher Nana Nwachukwu at Trinity College Dublin were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors with items of clothing removed or added. The UK-based Internet Watch Foundation said its analysts “have discovered criminal imagery of children aged between 11 and 13 which appears to have been created using [Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool]”.
Nwachukwu’s research suggested that the way the images spread also reflected the culture of the platform itself, with users coaching one another on prompts, refining Grok’s output and sharing the results, turning the abuse into a kind of grotesque game.
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How did Elon Musk and X react?
Musk’s may have tried to switch off the tool for most people on Friday, but users reported that the separate Grok app, which does not share images publicly, was still allowing the generation of sexualised imagery of children.
X said last week: “We take action against illegal content on X, including CSAM, by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.” Musk himself commented: “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
That was an abrupt turn from an initially rather glib response. As Nick Robins-Early reported at the start of the year, email inquiries to xAI – the company that owns and makes Grok – for comment about the story were greeted with the reply “Legacy Media Lies”. That trollish tone again.
The Grok scandal poses a real reputational threat to Musk and X, though. With his affiliation to the Maga movement and the way he has influenced the social media platform’s recommendation algorithms, Musk has been hailed as a hero of the political right. Yet, as Sophia Smith Galer argued in this opinion piece: “Protecting women and children is a core tenet of conservative values … we’re going to see if they are still willing to defend a US company in the name of free speech, even when it allows people to create sexualised content of children.”
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What – if anything – can politicians do about it?
Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, the communications regulator Ofcom has the power in serious cases to seek a court order to block a website or app in the UK. It can also impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said Ofcom “has our full support to take action in relation to this”.
As Dan and Amelia Gentleman explored in this useful explainer about the legality of the creation of these sort of images, social media regulation is a nascent area. Trying to control the deployment of artificial intelligence is on the next level.
The key issue here, Dan tells me, is speed. At the point when I spoke to him, Ofcom hadn’t even announced a formal investigation. “You can see how the legislation, even when it’s in place, is being outstripped by not only the development of this AI technology, but the impact of it,” he says.
“People who’ve been unwittingly stripped never wanted those images to appear in the first place, and they obviously want them taken down. In the meantime, Ofcom has to go through all these regulatory hurdles before X might face any punishment.” Meanwhile, Indonesia blocked access to Grok on Saturday. Swift action is possible.
In December, ministers promised new laws to ban “nudification” tools, although it remains unclear what the timeline is for their introduction.
“It does feel that the Online Safety Act can’t please anyone,” Dan says. “Some people will say that’s probably a good thing and shows that the act is doing its job. At the libertarian end people say that it impinges free speech, but on the other hand, there are child safety campaigners who say that the act doesn’t go far enough and isn’t being implemented quickly enough or with enough rigour.”
There is also a personal reputation angle to this for those in power, as politicians are among the most avid users of the social media platform. Ministers have said that they are considering leaving X, and the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has faced questions about whether it is ethical for him to be declaring earnings from X when he appears to be sharing a platform with AI-generated CSAM. Farage said he was “very worried” about the images but believed the company would listen to criticism.
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The worst is yet to come …
“In the five years that I’ve been covering this sector, online sexual harassment has been an ever-present problem, and it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s diminished,” Dan says. “The internet, AI and social media are really testing the boundaries of law and ethics.”
And finding a solution isn’t helped by the clash of cultural worldviews between the US and Europe. JD Vance has been vocal in saying that European efforts at tech regulation are a threat to free speech (although perhaps Lammy’s report of their conversation suggests even he now has concerns).
But perhaps what makes the Grok scandal – and the response to it – so unsettling is how it collapses several of the internet’s worst failures into one episode: powerful technology released without restraint, platforms designed to reward outrage and cruelty, and a political system that struggles to move at anything like the speed of harm. For the women and children targeted by these images, the damage is already real. The question now is whether anyone with the power to stop it is willing to move as fast as the technology that enabled it.
What else we’ve been reading
Emma Beddington’s interview with neuroscientist Ben Rein, about how socialising not only makes you feel good but can help you live longer, made me consider exiting my January hibernation a little early this year. Lucinda Everett, newsletters team
Louise Donovan looks at an unexpectedly dark side to floristry – the horrifying ramifications of the use of unregulated pesticides and an industry oblivious to the dangers they present to a largely female workforce. Martin
The piece I never wanted to see written but thoroughly enjoyed: Eamonn Forde considers whether David Bowie’s legacy is finally fading. Time to up the musical indoctrination of the young people in your life? Lucinda
The market cap for the survivalist industry in the US is forecast to be nearly $300bn by the end of the decade. Jasper Craven meets two big names in mainstream disaster preparedness for Wired. Martin
Time comes for us all, and Coco Khan’s feeling it – as gen Z have started pining for 2016 as if it were vintage style from the 1930s: “Call me soppy, but people in their mid-20s feeling that their best years are behind them, sounding like pensioners, is very depressing.” Toby Moses, head of newsletters
Sport
Football | FA Cup third-round weekend contained one of the biggest shocks in the competition’s history, when Macclesfield defeated holders Crystal Palace on Saturday. Yesterday, Brighton joined in the fun, travelling to managerless Old Trafford to defeat Manchester United 2-1 thanks to former United star Danny Welbeck, pictured above, who scored the 64th-minute goal.
Cricket | The Ashes fallout continues, with Mark Ramprakash writing that the future of England’s head coach, Brendan McCullum, must be in doubt – suggesting that Alec Stewart could be the man to step in.
NFL | Brock Purdy threw a go-ahead touchdown pass to Christian McCaffrey late in the fourth quarter, San Francisco used a trick play on a TD toss from wide receiver Jauan Jennings, and the 49ers eliminated the defending Super Bowl champions Philadelphia Eagles with a 23-19 wildcard victory on Sunday.
The front pages
“Iran warns US not to attack as protester death toll soars” – that’s the Guardian this morning, while the Daily Mail has “Shot dead, Robina, 23, a victim of the Mullahs’ death squads” – our version is here. The Telegraph says “Ban the IRGC, Starmer is urged” referring to Iran’s revolutionary guard which protects Iran’s dictatorship. The i paper runs with “We’re not ready to bomb Iran yet, warn US generals” while in the Metro it’s “Fire and fury as Iran revolts”.
Monday’s Financial Times splashes on “EU demands ‘Farage clause’ in talks over Brexit reset”. The Express has “Pharmacies in crisis after Labour’s tax raid”. The Maccabi Tel Aviv saga grinds on in the Times – “MPs to urge sacking of police chief in fans ban” – as does the Epstein saga in the Mirror which lambasts “Mandelson’s sorry excuse”.
Today in Focus
How to fall in love with winter
Writer Katherine May talks about ‘wintering’ and learning to love the darkest months of the year.
Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
In this week’s instalment of the Guardian’s series A new start after 60, Helen Smith shares her experience of adopting a Guide Dog mum – a dog that provides puppies to be trained.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, Smith was feeling “increasingly isolated”. Her children had left home and she was living in Germany, where she had moved in 1998 for her husband’s work, only to lose him in 2011 to a virus. “I thought there must be more to life than working in my garden, working on my business, and seeing my family occasionally,” she says.
By June 2022, Smith knew she wanted to return to the UK and look after a Guide Dog mum. She moved back to her home county of Warwickshire and within a month found Blossom, who has brought her new friends, a community, and renewed confidence.
“I go out and have dinner at the cafe, and she’s lying at my feet, says Smith. “If I hadn’t got her, I would never go to a cafe by myself. Blossom has given me confidence to do all sorts of things.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
