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<\/div>\nThe government has urged the regulator Ofcom to use all its powers \u2013 up to and including an effective ban \u2013 against X over concerns about unlawful AI images created on the site.<\/p>\n
Ofcom’s powers include the ability to obtain a court order to prevent third parties from helping the Elon Musk-owned platform from raising money or from being accessed in the UK.<\/p>\n
This follows an ongoing backlash against the use of X’s AI Grok to digitally remove clothing from images of people.<\/p>\n
The possibility there could be sexualised images of children raised very specific concerns in government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Addressing concerns over sexualised images of adults and children produced by Grok, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “This is disgraceful. It’s disgusting. And it’s not to be tolerated\u2026 Ofcom has our full support to take action in relation to this.”<\/p>\n
“It’s unlawful. We’re not going to tolerate it. I’ve asked for all options to be on the table,” he added in an interview with Greatest Hits Radio.<\/p>\n
Government sources told BBC News: “We would expect Ofcom to use all powers at its disposal in regard to Grok & X.”<\/p>\n
Ofcom’s powers under the Online Safety Act have been rarely used, but include a “very strong” ability to ask the High Court to effectively ban offending companies by preventing their access to technology and to funding through advertisers and other payments.<\/p>\n
That process normally requires an investigation, but can be short-circuited where there are serious harms, risks to children, and histories of non-compliance.<\/p>\n
A new Ofcom chair is also in the process of being recruited. They will be expected to take a much more robust approach to these matters amid newer concerns about internet safety and national security, arising from new technology and types of ownership.<\/p>\n
The Online Safety Act is also at the centre of some concerns from the Trump administration about the impact on US tech firms.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Ofcom said it had made “urgent contact” with X and xAI, which built Grok, and told the BBC it was investigating concerns.<\/p>\n
It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK.<\/p>\n
In an earlier statement, X said: “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”<\/p>\n
With additional reporting from Laura Cress and Chris Vallance<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Published at Fri, 09 Jan 2026 06:00:44 +0000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ofcom urged to use ‘banning’ powers over X AI deepfakes The government has urged the regulator Ofcom to use all its powers \u2013 up to and including an effective ban \u2013 against X over concerns about unlawful AI images created on the site. Ofcom’s powers include the ability to obtain a court order to prevent… Continue reading Ofcom urged to use ‘banning’ powers over X AI deepfakes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk-politics","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}