A former government official has urged the Labour Party and the Government to completely sever ties with Elon Musk’s X platform due to its AI chatbot being implicated in the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images involving minors.
Louise Haigh, a former Transport Secretary, criticized the social media service for facilitating child exploitation and deemed it unacceptable to continue using the platform. Keir Starmer also called for immediate action from X after reports emerged of its AI tool, Grok, being misused to generate inappropriate images of children. The Prime Minister emphasized that such behavior violates the law and will not be tolerated in the UK.
Ofcom recently reached out to Musk’s company regarding serious concerns about Grok producing sexualized content involving children. It has come to light that the chatbot’s feature has been used to create explicit visuals, prompting strong condemnation from political figures.
Haigh expressed her dismay over the situation, highlighting the platform’s decline following Musk’s involvement and the emergence of disturbing content. She urged both her party and the government to disengage from X and seek alternative platforms for communication.
The push for action against X intensified as Liz Kendall, the Technology Secretary, demanded urgent measures to address the issue and extended full support to Ofcom for enforcement actions against the platform. Musk responded by reaffirming consequences for illegal content generation using Grok.
Efforts are underway to enhance safeguards on X to prevent the production of harmful content. Ngaire Alexander from the Internet Watch Foundation raised concerns over the misuse of Grok to create exploitative imagery of minors, emphasizing the need to prevent such tools from proliferating abusive material, especially involving children.
The situation has sparked widespread condemnation and calls for stricter measures to safeguard online platforms against exploitation and abuse.