Musk v Starmer: will UK ban X over Grok nudification? – The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:13He's trying to turn this into a culture war issue He's talking about free speech He's said that the British government is acting in a way which is fascist No woman or child should live in fear of having their image sexually manipulated by technology Yet in recent days, the Grok AI tool on the social media platform X has been used to create and share degrading non-consensual intimate deepfakes. The strength of Elon amongst ministers is there for all to see at the start of this week and it seems like they're spoiling for a fight with Elon Musk. The government is preparing to go into battle with Elon Musk after an outcry over sexualised deepfakes on his platform X.

0:56From The Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth. Joining me is Aaron Sharp, Senior National Editor at The Guardian. So let's talk about the tool that's at the centre of this story, this Grok tool that is enabling users to create sexualised deepfake images, particularly of women and children on demand that's been met with an outcry from ministers and the public. Yeah, so Grok is X's, Elon Musk's in-house generative AI tool. It's a chatbot. It's not been without controversy since its launch. It's been accused of being right-wing in its political stance and of publishing disinformation or repeating disinformation.

1:38But this latest scandal is one which involves Grok's ability to manipulate imagery. There was an update to Grok's image manipulation capabilities in December. One of the types of pictures which users seem to have been playing around with were images of women and testing El Grock's ability to sexualize those pictures by something called nudification, which is essentially asking the AI chatbot to strip a picture of a woman of its clothes, picture her in a bikini. And this capability has even been rolled out to pictures of children in some of the most serious cases. Yeah, and that is one of the most shocking aspects of this.

2:20Today in Focus spoke to a woman called Ashley St. Clair, who spoke about her experience of being a victim of this type of nudification online. So we can hear a bit from that interview. What I opened was a photo of Grok undressing me and putting me in a bikini. Some of these images are still up on the platform as we're speaking right now. I checked this morning. These posts have been up for days now at this point. One of me in a floss bikini, which is essentially nude. And it does appear that there has not been action taken against these accounts either. So amid mounting criticism and concern about this, X made moves last week to put this tool behind a paywall to make it only available to paid subscribers.

3:03But But X and Elon Musk are absolutely and resolutely refusing to take the tool down. As far as the government is concerned, that doesn't go anywhere near far enough to clamp down on this, does it? That's right. So the minister's absolutely furious that the initial response was to say, well, basically, if you've got the cash to pay for a Twitter membership, you can carry on. So the government response initially has been to expedite a piece of legislation, which is going to make it illegal for this nudification to take place. Because it's currently an offence to share deep fake sexualised imagery that's harmful to women and children, but this makes it an offence to generate that imaging, right?

3:44So that's a step in that direction. But the other thing that the government's looking to do is to give Ofcom more power to issue a fine and in the worst case scenario to ban X altogether. But it seems like we're quite a long way from that happening, right? Yes, Ofcom has the power under the Online Safety Act to take more serious action against social media. Ofcom has the ability to fine a company 10 % of its annual revenue, which in this case, some estimates say could amount to a$200 million fine for X. The other far more serious sanction that it has available to it is to ban the platform entirely.

4:24it's going to be a hugely complicated investigation for Ofcom, certainly the biggest that they will have undertaken since they have been given these powers for ministers. If it was a small AI provider, which was, say, set up by a couple of tech bros in the back room of a science lab, this would be a police investigation. It wouldn't be an Ofcom letter which is going through the door. It would be police officers. Because Twitter is the size that it is and because Elon Musk is the figure that he is, so consequential, so powerful, this is going to be a long-running an investigation which has to take its time and make sure that it's grounded legally in such a way as there can't be any room for judicial appeals.

4:59And it seems back in favour with the White House. He's been seen dining with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. I think it's worth saying that Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, has told MPs yesterday, if X cannot control Grok, we will, and we'll do it fast, because if you profit from harm and abuse, you lose the right to self-regulate. The government has been criticised for its slowness in responding to this as this outcry unfolded last week. Elon Musk has been very vocal on his own platform over the weekend on X, talking about this or framing this as a free speech issue that the UK would even countenance a ban on X as censorship.

5:37So clearly untroubled by the political debate that's happening here. The best description that can be applied of Elon Musk's reaction to this whole scandal is that he's doing it in a very Elon Musk way. He's trying to turn this into a culture war issue instead of responding to legitimate concerns about harms to women and to children. He's talking about free speech. He's said that the British government is acting in a way which is fascist. And so he's trying to fight his corner along political lines. And I think where he might run into difficulty with that strategy is that the harm that's being done to women and children with the use of Grok at the minute is not the type of thing that can be argued in a kind of left-right traditional political way.

6:24There are people, even in America, on the right side of politics in America, which is where he situates himself, in line with Donald Trump, who would say, no, actually the protection of women and girls is at the center of what we're about. And if you are the tech billionaire who is essentially mainstreaming abuse, that's not a good place for you to be. So he certainly doesn't seem to be taking it in a way where he's concerned to the point where he wants to change Grok anytime soon. Whether or not the regulators are going to force him to do that remains to be seen. Because you've got two issues there that are very key to the MAGA base, haven't you?

6:59You've got the protection of free speech, but you've also got the protection of women and children. That's something that the UK government is likely to be aware of as it's in talks with Washington about how to regulate this better domestically. Yeah, it's a fascinating issue which sort of falls differently depending on what side of the Atlantic you're on. We know that David Lammy spoke to J.D. Vance over the weekend and they raised the issue of GROC. Vance seems to have said to Lammy that he was concerned about what was happening over here and he thought that the UK government were right to take action.

7:33However, we've heard Washington figures at the start of the week saying that any cancellation of X would be tantamount to a freedom of speech clampdown, the like of which you would see in Putin's Russia. So clearly there's no one single held opinion in Washington. And of course, that makes this issue very complicated for the UK government because they're always trying to do things with the sign off of President Trump and the White House. However, it has to be said that the strength of feeling amongst ministers is there for all to see at the start of this week. And it seems like they're spoiling for a fight with Elon Musk.

8:08And they feel like that's a fight which might play well with public opinion in the UK. Because Elon Musk is not an especially popular figure in this country, not the same way that he is in the US. And they're thinking that there may be if they can bring him to heel in the UK, that might be something that plays well with the public. Yeah. And it's not just this fight with Elon Musk, is it? It's also about restrictions in the Australia model of social media for under-16s, which is something that's being talked about a lot. But Kemi Badenok, the leader of the Tories, has issued her support for it and Labour ministers starting to indicate that they might support a similar move.

8:41Yeah, it's a really interesting political moment at the minute where attitudes towards social media access are concerned. We've seen in Australia they've managed to successfully enforce a social media ban for under-16s. And today there have been reports that Keir Starmer is minded to consider a similar option in the UK. Obviously, these are all very early stages in terms of their thinking, but it seems like the political weather is headed in the direction of much more social media scepticism. As you mentioned, Kemi Badenoch has already said that in the unlikely event that she was Prime Minister, she would ban under-16s from accessing social media.

9:20We know that Nigel Farage has said he doesn't quite agree with banning things, but if he were prime minister, there would be no smartphones in schools, for example. So this whole story only feeds into that issue. And certainly with X and with Elon Musk's intransigence, you can see that this will only add fuel to the fire. Aaron, it's fascinating. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks.

9:43That's it for today. My thanks again to Aaron Sharp, Senior National Editor at The Guardian. You can keep up with all our reporting on this story over at theguardian.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus. We'll be in your feeds every weekday evening with what you need to know about the story everyone's talking about in around 10 minutes. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds tomorrow morning and we'll be back with you tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. The producer was Bryony Moore. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

10:14This is The Guardian. .