LondonBritish Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued an unequivocal warning to Elon Musk this Monday evening: if X is not able to control his artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, the British government will do so “swiftly” and with the full force of the law. “If you do business with harm and abuse, you lose the right to self-regulate,” he said premier during a meeting with the Labor group in the Commons. It is, so far, the hardest blow from Downing Street against the tycoon, who has immediately accused London, through his social network, of “looking for any excuse” to exercise censorship.
Keir Starmer’s threat comes hours after the British government confirmed that this week the UK will make it a criminal offense to create intimate images without consent, including those generated by artificial intelligence. The Minister for Technology, Liz Kendall, has announced in Parliament that the development and distribution of tools specifically designed to create this type of material will also be banned, which she has described as “disgusting”. Until now it was only illegal to share such images without the consent of the person concerned.
In addition, the government will use the new crime and security law, currently in the parliamentary process, to criminalize so-called stripping apps, widely used to generate artificial intelligence-generated sexual images.
Starmer’s threat and the minister’s announcement have coincided with the opening of a formal investigation by Ofcom – the British audiovisual media regulator – against Grok, after detecting its use to generate thousands of sexualized images of women without their consent, as well as extreme content that affects teenagers and minors. The control body has explicitly warned of the risk of “abuse of intimate images” and child sexual exploitation material.
Ofcom has recalled that, under theonline safety actcan ask the courts to block the X platform in the UK and impose fines of up to £18 million or 10% of the group’s global turnover if it concludes that it has not done enough to prevent illegal content or prevent minors from accessing adult material. The investigation will examine six key areas, including risk assessments, the speed with which images are removed and the potential exposure of children to content.
The pressure from London is also international. Malaysia and Indonesia this weekend became the first countries in the world to block Grok, citing the same risks. From Washington, Donald Trump’s administration has already reacted: Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers has accused the United Kingdom of considering “a Russian-style ban on X”.
Beyond Elon Musk’s comment, X has not officially responded, although it had previously assured that it is taking action against illegal content. Last week the company partially limited access to its artificial intelligence to paying subscribers, a move that has not avoided public outrage or stopped the regulatory offensive. An offensive that has only come after it was verified that Grok shared his results on the X network. The problem for lawmakers, however, is that the speed of advances in artificial intelligence is infinitely greater than the ability of democratic powers to regulate its capabilities.
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