Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Sir Keir Starmer has promised to take action against Elon Musk’s X, urging the social media platform to “get their act together” and stop its AI chatbot tool Grok from producing sexualised images of children.
The UK prime minister made the comments as former Labour cabinet minister Louise Haigh urged the government to stop using X altogether.
Starmer stepped in amid growing public fury over what he called “unlawful” images generated by Grok, developed by Musk’s xAI, and shared on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“This is disgraceful, it’s disgusting and it’s not to be tolerated. X has got to get a grip of this,” Starmer told Greatest Hits Radio on Thursday. “We will take action on this because it’s simply not tolerable.”
Over the past few days, users have been able to get Grok to create sexual images of children, which goes against the company’s user guidelines.
In France, ministers have reported the images Grok generated to prosecutors. They also referred it to Arcom, the country’s media regulator, regarding “possible breaches by X” of its obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
Starmer said he supported a potential intervention by Ofcom, the UK media regulator, which said this week that it was investigating the allegations.
The tech industry and regulators have been grappling with the far-reaching social impact of generative AI.
The Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based non-profit, said AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery had doubled in the past year, with material becoming more extreme.
Grok has been intentionally designed to have fewer content guardrails than competitors, with Musk calling the model “maximally truth-seeking”.
But Grok 4, its most powerful model, was released in July with a “Spicy mode” feature that allows users to generate risqué and sexually suggestive content for adults. X incorporates some xAI features, such as Grok, directly into the platform.
The UK is working on a bill to make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools that can generate images of child sexual abuse, and to require AI systems to be thoroughly tested to ensure they cannot generate illegal content.
Haigh, the former transport secretary, urged both the UK government and the Labour Party to quit X.
“It was already an unpleasant place prior to its takeover by Elon Musk, but since his acceptance of hate speech and anonymous online abusers, it has become utterly unusable,” she said.
“The revelations around the enablement, if not encouragement, of child sexual abuse mean it is unconscionable to use the site for another minute.”
Yesterday the Women and Equalities Committee said it had stopped using the social media platform.
Sarah Owen, who chairs the committee, wrote to Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds saying: “It is surely no longer tenable for the government to have a continued presence on such a platform, not least given the government’s mission in tackling violence against women and girls.”
