Liz Kendall calls on X to ‘deal with this urgently’ while expert criticises ‘worryingly slow’ government response

The UK technology secretary has called a wave of images of women and children with their clothes digitally removed generated by Elon Musk’s Grok AI “appalling and unacceptable in decent society”.

After thousands of intimate deepfakes circulated online, Liz Kendall said X, Musk’s social media platform, needed to “deal with this urgently” and she backed the UK regulator Ofcom to “take any enforcement action it deems necessary”.

Degrading pictures being posted on Elon Musk’s site despite the platform pledging to suspend people who generate them

Degrading images of children and women with their clothes digitally removed by Grok AI continue to be shared on Elon Musk’s X, despite the platform’s commitment to suspend users who generate them.

After days of concern over use of the chatbot to alter photographs to create sexualised pictures of real women and children stripped to their underwear without their consent, the UK’s communication’s watchdog, Ofcom, said on Monday that it had made “urgent contact with X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK”. Ofcom added that it would assess whether an investigation is necessary based on the company’s response.