The British government is set to introduce a new criminal offense this week aimed at curbing the creation of non-consensual intimate images, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said Monday, amid growing concerns over AI-generated deepfakes.
The move follows an investigation into U.S. billionaire Elon Musk's X’s AI chatbot, Grok, which has been used to generate sexual images of people without their consent.
X will now be required to remove deepfake content under U.K. law, as Kendall described the sexualized images created by Grok as "weapons of abuse.”
She told MPs: "Under the Online Safety Act, sharing intimate images without someone's consent or threatening to share them, including images of people in their underwear, is a criminal offence for individuals and for platforms."
"The Data Act, passed last year, made it a criminal offence to create or request the creation of non-consensual intimate images. Today I can announce to the House that this offence will be brought into force this week, and that I will make it a priority offence in the Online Safety Act too," she added.
Kendall said that the sexualized deepfake images circulating on X were "vile" and illegal.
She added: "In recent days, the Grok AI tool on the social media platform X has been used to create and share degrading, non-consensual, sexual, intimate deepfakes. The content that has circulated on X is vile. It’s not just an affront to decent society. It is illegal."
The U.K.’s online safety regulator Ofcom on Monday opened a formal investigation into tech billionaire Elon Musk's social media company X over concerns that the platform's AI tool Grok is being used to create sexualized imagery.
The watchdog will examine whether X has failed to meet several key obligations under the Online Safety Act. These include whether the platform has properly assessed the risk of U.K. users encountering illegal content, and whether it has carried out updated risk assessments before making significant changes to its service.
