UK, Canada and Australia might ban X over Grok deepfakes
Government officials from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have initiated coordinated discussions regarding regulatory action against X (formerly Twitter) after its Grok AI chatbot was used to create explicit deepfake images of women and children. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has directed the media regulator Ofcom to consider all potential penalties, including a total ban, describing the platform’s failure to prevent such content as “disgraceful.” While Canadian officials confirmed that high-level inter-governmental talks are underway, they clarified that Canada is not currently considering an outright ban. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also condemned the platform, labeling the generated content “completely abhorrent” and citing a lack of social responsibility.
Regulatory backlash has already resulted in service restrictions in other regions. Indonesia became the first nation to block access to Grok, followed by a temporary ban in Malaysia, with both governments citing the need to protect citizens from non-consensual pornographic content. Further pressure is mounting from Europe, where the European Commission has ordered X to retain internal documents for a potential investigation under the Digital Services Act. Additionally, the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation reported discovering criminal imagery of minors on the dark web that users claimed was generated using Grok.
In response to the crisis, X restricted Grok’s image generation tools to paying subscribers, a move UK officials dismissed as an “insulting” attempt to monetize the problem rather than solve it. The regulatory standoff has escalated into a political dispute, with Elon Musk accusing the UK government of “fascism” and censorship. Meanwhile, U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna has threatened to push for sanctions against the UK should it proceed with banning the platform.