The UK communications regulator issued a statement on the 12th announcing that it has formally launched an investigation into the social media platform X, owned by American entrepreneur Elon Musk, under the UK Online Safety Act. The investigation aims to determine whether X has fulfilled its duty to protect UK citizens from harmful illegal content. This investigation will be advanced as a “top priority,” and in the “most serious circumstances,” the possibility of blocking access to X is not ruled out.
The statement noted that the misuse of X’s built-in artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to generate and disseminate fake sexually explicit content involving real people is “deeply concerning.” The UK communications regulator will conduct a formal investigation to determine whether X has “failed to comply with its legal obligations stipulated by the Online Safety Act.”
The statement said the investigation would include: assessing the risks of UK users encountering “content that is illegal in the UK” on the platform; determining whether X has taken appropriate measures to prevent UK users from seeing illegal content such as non-consensual intimate photos; whether X promptly removes content it knows to be illegal; and assessing the risks Grok poses to minors in the UK, among others.
The statement said that if a company is found to have violated the law, the regulator may require specific corrective actions or remedies for damages caused, and may impose fines of up to £18 million (around 98.35 million MYR) or 10% of the company’s global qualifying revenue (whichever is higher).
The statement added that in the most serious and persistent cases, the regulator can apply to the courts for “business interruption measures,” whereby the court may issue temporary or permanent orders requiring payment service providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from the platform, or require internet service providers to block domestic access to the platform’s website.
“Grok” was developed by Musk’s AI company xAI and embedded in Musk’s social media platform X. Recently, the tool has been misused to generate fabricated sexualized images of real people, which have then been circulated on X—with numerous women and minors among the victims.
Following widespread condemnation, xAI recently changed Grok’s image generation and editing features to be accessible only to paying subscribers. The UK government stated that this latest service change merely “turns the ability to create illegal images with AI into a premium feature,” calling it “insulting” to victims and “not a solution” at all.