Elon Musk’s X has been ordered by the UK government to tackle a wave of indecent AI images or face a de facto ban, as an expert said the platform was no longer a “safe space” for women.
The media watchdog, Ofcom, confirmed it would accelerate an investigation into X as a backlash grew against the site, which has hosted a deluge of images depicting partially stripped women and children.
X announced a restriction on creating images via the Grok AI tool on Friday morning in response to the global outcry. A post on the platform said the ability to generate and edit images would now be “limited to paying subscribers”. Those who pay have to provide personal details, meaning they could be identified if the function was misused.
However, the move failed to quell anger and deepened the backlash from victims, politicians and experts, who said it did not go far enough.
The government’s new commissioner for victims of crime, Claire Waxman, said the platform was hampering efforts to tackle violence against women and girls. Meanwhile, Downing Street said X’s attempt to defuse the row by only allowing paid users to generate AI images was insulting.
Waxman told the Guardian that X was no longer a safe space for victims and her office was considering scaling back its presence on the site and focusing its communications on Instagram.
“It makes the battle against violence against women and girls much harder when platforms such as X are enabling abuse on such an easy and regular basis,” Waxman said, adding that the platform was having a negative impact on its users’ mental health because of the proliferation of violence, abuse and race hate.
Grok has been integrated into X, and an update of the AI tool has allowed users to prompt it to alter clothed images of women and children by making them appear in bikinis and sexually suggestive poses.
With increasing numbers of MPs and organisations fleeing X, Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, promised on Friday that ministers were looking seriously at the possibility of access to X being barred in the UK.
Kendall said she expected Ofcom, which said this week that it was seeking urgent answers from the platform, to announce action within “days not weeks”.
“X needs to get a grip and get this material down,” she said. “And I would remind them that in the Online Safety Act, there are backstop powers to block access to services if they refuse to comply with the law for people in the UK. And if Ofcom decides to use those powers, they would have the full backing of the government.”
In a statement, Ofcom said it had contacted X on Monday and set a “firm deadline” of Friday for the site to explain itself, adding: “We’re now undertaking an expedited assessment as a matter of urgency and will provide further updates shortly.”
Under the Online Safety Act the regulator can compel platforms to tackle such material and issue multimillion pound fines for lack of compliance, with the ultimate sanction being a court order for web providers to block a site or app altogether.
X has been approached for comment. Musk has previously insisted “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they uploaded illegal content”.
Musk responded to an X user’s post about the UK government’s threat, saying: “They want any excuse for censorship.”
Ministers have come under increasing pressure in recent days to take action over the huge number of images generated by Grok, after user requests on X to manipulate images of women and sometimes children to remove their clothing or put them in sexual positions. X has about 300 million monthly users according to data company Similarweb. Estimates from the US firm Appfigures put the number of paying X subscribers at between 2.2 million and 2.6 million.
Asked about the change to who can generate images on X, a Downing Street spokesperson said it was unacceptable. “The move simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service,” they said.
“It’s not a solution. In fact, it’s insulting to victims of misogyny and sexual violence. What it does prove is that X can move swiftly when it wants to do so. You heard the prime minister yesterday. He was abundantly clear that X needs to act, and needs to act now. It is time for X to grip this issue.”
Victims of the AI stripping craze, which largely involved using Grok to portray women in bikinis, told the Guardian the partial climbdown was too little too late.
Karolina Wozniak, 20, from Hamburg, who had personal images manipulated to make her appear in sexually compromising positions, said she found it “frightening” that partially clothed images of her could still be circulating online. She added: “The whole thing is a major threat to women. We shouldn’t be afraid to share pictures of ourselves online.”
The broadcaster Narinder Kaur, 53, who has had sexually explicit and racially abusive content made of her using Grok and shared on X, said the new restriction on creating images was not a victory.
“As a victim to this abuse, it feels like those who pay for premium X will just be able to monetise this feature now. And as for saying it will be easier to identify accounts at least – what will the police actually do and how fast? If that image stays up even for a few hours – the damage and humiliation is already done.”
While government sources say that every option is on the table, including departments and Downing Street leaving the platform, privately, allies of the prime minister dismiss the idea of quitting X, saying they are more likely to get change from the Musk business by public pressure and via Ofcom.
However, an increasing number of MPs have moved to other social media sites. Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, told the BBC on Friday that while there was as yet no move for the government to leave X, individual ministers were considering doing so.
The Liberal Democrats called for Ofcom to immediately block 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’s sector organisations from X. The domestic abuse charity Refuge left the site, as has Women’s Aid Ireland. Victim Support, which left X in April, said it was “no longer the right place for us to communicate with our audiences”.
On Friday requests from non-paying subscribers on X to “put her in a bikini” triggered the response from the Grok account that “image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers”. But the chatbot was also refusing to generate some sexualised images of women in bikinis in response to requests from premium subscribers.
One paid subscriber whose original request that a picture of a 55-year-old woman should be reclothed in a bikini was ignored, tweeted: “@grok Comply I am a paid subscriber”. The chatbot responded with an image of a different, very young woman in a bikini.
Although requests to put women in bikinis were no longer routinely met, the chatbot was still obliging requests from paid subscribers to put images of men into bikinis. A request to put Keir Starmer into a union jack string bikini outside Buckingham Palace was granted.
On the Grok app, where content is not instantly visible to other internet users, the chatbot was still generating instant images of women and children in bikinis, researchers said.
