UK regulator launches investigation into X over Grok sexualised imagery
LONDON, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Britain’s media regulator launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s X on Monday to determine whether sexually explicit deepfakes produced by the Grok AI chatbot breached its duty to protect people in the United Kingdom from potentially illegal content.
“There are deeply worrying reports that the Grok AI chatbot account on he said.
The regulator is under pressure to take action after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the images produced by Grok were “disgusting” and “illegal”.
On Thursday, Starmer said Musk’s X needed to “contain” Grok, adding that Ofcom had the government’s full support to take action.
It is illegal in Britain to create or share child sexual abuse material, including non-consensual intimate images or artificial intelligence-generated sexual images.
Tech platforms also need to prevent UK users from encountering illegal content and remove it when they become aware of it.
X has faced condemnation in other countries for this feature, which “can produce images of women and minors in tight clothing.”
French authorities reported X to prosecutors and regulators, calling the content “clearly illegal”, while Indian authorities also demanded an explanation.
X has limited the feature to paying users. Last week, it announced that all illegal content on the platform was removed and the relevant accounts were permanently suspended.
“Anyone who uses or encourages Grok to create illegal content will be subject to the same consequences as if they had uploaded illegal content,” he said.
Asked about the issue recently, xAI told Reuters: “Old Media Lies.”
Ofcom will investigate whether X failed to assess the risk of people in Britain seeing illegal content and whether it failed to take into account the risk to children.
Ofcom said that in the most serious cases of non-compliance it could ask the court to “request payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform” or order internet service providers to block access to a site in Britain.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Ofcom investigation.
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Paul Sandle, writing by William James; Editing by Kate Holton)
