Sir Keir Starmer has threatened to “control” X’s AI chatbot Grok if Elon Musk’s social media platform continues to create sexual images of women and children.
The prime minister told his MPs the actions of Grok and X are “absolutely disgusting and shameful”.
“If X cannot control Grok, we will – and we’ll do it fast because if you profit from harm and abuse, you lose the right to self regulate,” he told a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Images are being generated by Grok, X’s AI tool, that sexualise women and children, manipulating photos of people to remove their clothes or make them pose in suggestive ways.
Grok’s image creation function has been switched off for all but paying subscribers after a global outcry, but some non-paying users have reported still being able to generate sexualised images of women and children.
Sir Keir added on Monday evening: “Protecting their abusive users, rather than the women and children who are being abused shows a total distortion of priorities.
“So let me be crystal clear, we won’t stand for it, because no matter how unstable or complex the world becomes, this government will be guided by its values. We’ll stand up for the vulnerable against the powerful.”
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Downing Street earlier suggested the government was open to ending its use of X if the platform did not act on concerns about its AI chatbot, adding that “all options are on the table”.
Over the weekend, Mr Musk said the UK government “wants any excuse for censorship” after Sir Keir said X needed “to get a grip” of Grok and Downing Street described the limitation to paid users as “insulting”.
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Just hours before Sir Keir’s latest threat, technology secretary Liz Kendall announced she was speeding up laws to make creating non-consensual intimate images with AI a criminal offence.
Requesting the creation of the images will also be illegal from this week, she said.
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The Data (Use and Access) Act was passed last year, with sections of the act being implemented slowly, but Ms Kendall said she was speeding it up for the section on AI creation of non-consensual intimate images.
She also announced that the Crime and Policing Bill, which is going through parliament, will make it a criminal offence for companies to supply tools designed to create non-consensual internet images.
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On Monday morning, media watchdog Ofcom launched a formal investigation into Grok, which will look into whether X has “failed to comply with its legal obligations under the Online Safety Act”.
The regulator said: “There have been deeply concerning reports of the Grok AI chatbot account on X being used to create and share undressed images of people – which may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography – and sexualised images of children that may amount to child sexual abuse material.”
