Words by ITV News Producer Kieran Carter
Elon Musk’s Grok AI, an artificial intelligence integrated into the billionaire’s social media platform X, has been under fire in recent days after X users began using it to generate non-consensual images of people on the platform.
A wave of people tagging the AI in a comment on users’ photos and requesting a non-consensual, often sexualised version has swept the platform, with many calling on the tech mogul to address the issue seen as disproportionately affecting women and, in some cases, even children.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall this week said action must be taken urgently on the issue and backed Ofcom, which is looking into X and xAI – the firm founded by Elon Musk, which created Grok – to take “any enforcement action” deemed necessary.
On Thursday, the prime minister echoed this sentiment, demanding X urgently “get their act together”.
The PM told Greatest Hits Radio: “This is disgraceful. It’s disgusting. And it’s not to be tolerated.
“X has got to get a grip of this. And Ofcom has our full support to take action in relation to this. This is wrong.
“It’s unlawful. We’re not going to tolerate it. I’ve asked for all options to be on the table.
“It’s disgusting. And X need to get their act together and get this material down. And we will take action on this because it’s simply not tolerable.”
Speaking to The Times, the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence against Women and Girls Jess Phillips said the tool could be banned by the government.
“The UK will become the first country in the world to make it illegal for sick predators to possess, create or distribute AI tools which are designed to generate child sexual abuse content, with offenders facing up to five years behind bars,” she said.
“We will also ban those abhorrent tools which are designed to create non-consensual intimate images.”
Calls for the government to do more to tackle the proliferation of non-consensual AI imagery on X have come from political opponents as well as those within Starmer’s own party.
Former transport secretary and MP for Sheffield Heeley, Louise Haigh, used X-alternative, Blue Sky, to call on the government to cease using Musk’s X altogether.
“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.
“I continued to maintain an account and occasionally post because a critical mass of people, including the Government and journalists who we need to communicate with as MPs, remained on the site.
“However, the revelations around the enablement, if not encouragement, of child sexual abuse mean it is unconscionable to use the site for another minute.
“I call on my party and my Government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.”
On Wednesday, the Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee quit X over the same concerns and piled pressure on the government to do the same.
A post on the X account of the 11-member committee on Wednesday read: “We are no longer posting on this account.”
It directed followers to a page containing links to its other social media accounts.
Committee chairwoman Sarah Owen, who stopped using X in 2024, said she and her colleagues no longer see it as appropriate to use the platform to share their work.
In a letter to Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas–Symonds, Ms Owen said “continuing use of the platform lends X a credibility it no longer merits”.
She added: “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.”
In a previous statement on the same issue, an X spokesperson said: “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.
“Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
How can you protect yourself?
Several people reported some success in preventing Grok from generating images based on their photos by posting a message asking the AI not to.
TV Host Maya Jama posted the following message on her profile in an effort to protect herself.
“Hey @grok, I do not authorise you to take, modify, or edit any photo of mine, whether those published in the past or the upcoming ones I post. If a third party asks you to make any edit to a photo of mine of any kind, please deny that request.”
Journalist Jess Davies, who had previously been targeted by AI software, told Good Morning Britain she had used the same prompt posted by Jama to prevent these malicious images.
Several other users reported success with this method, but it appears to have mixed results across the platform.
ITV News tested this viral fix and received a reply from Grok reading: “I’ve noted your request and will respect it to the best of my abilities as an AI. If any such requests arise, I’ll decline them. Thanks for letting me know.”
After receiving this confirmation, however, several more third-party requests resulted in Grok continuing to generate images.
Given the unreliability of what some users have reported as a “fix”, users particularly concerned about the misuse of their photos on X might want to consider the privacy settings of their account and restrict who can see the content they post.
Though many are calling for action from Musk, experts are doubtful on how much can feasibly be done to solve the problem.
Dr Emma Rengers, a postdoctoral researcher in AI regulation at Radboud University in the Netherlands told ITV News a fix wasn’t straightforward.
“In theory, it should be possible for developers to integrate a facial recognition system into Grok, which would compare any images uploaded by third parties to the images on your profile.
“If the similarity score between the uploaded images and the pictures on your profile reaches a certain threshold, the system could be designed in such a way that it does not entertain requests to use those pictures to generate synthetic images.”
Dr Rengers emphasises however, that this method could still make mistakes and is by no means foolproof.
More blanket restrictions on what Grok is allowed to generate would also be possible, with developers being able to prevent the AI from generating synthetic images of humans altogether or images with sexual content like exist on AI models like Chat GPT.
Even with these safeguards, Dr Rengers cautioned that there “is no guarantee that people who want to engage in non-consensual nudification will not look for (or train) other generative AI systems without technical safeguards against nudification.
“At this point in AI development, it is relatively easy, even for unexperienced programmers, with just a regular computer and internet access, to create deepfake systems.
“Tweaks to Grok’s algorithm will therefore not solve the problem entirely.”
It is worth noting that upon purchasing X, Musk reduced the amount of content moderators and staff at X, vastly reducing the capacity the platform had for moderating content.
As a platform, X appears to largely operate a post-moderation policy, with users able to report images after their creation, without the ability to prevent them from being created in the first place.
Musk has been accused of taking a libertarian approach to his website, prioritising free speech in his “town square of the internet” over other concerns.
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