Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a tool that can perform different functions, such as answering questions or generating images. It is any artificial system that has the ability to perform tasks with little or no human management.
Despite its productive uses, X’s own AI assistant, Grok, has been in the headlines recently for being used to create explicit images, mostly of women being undressed or put into bikinis. Although the platform has now incorporated ‘ technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing’, there still is a clear lack of regulation.
On 14 January, the same day the BBC announced that ‘Grok will no longer be able to remove clothing from images of real people…’ Elon Musk, owner of X and Grok, put out a series of posts on X, with one stating ‘With NSFW enabled, Grok is supposed (to) allow upper body nudity of imaginary adult humans…’. Musk’s claims are not only contradictory but are a wider reflection of the bigger problem with AI – the lack of legislation.
Currently, there is little legislation surrounding AI. The European Union created the AI Act, which places AI into three different risk categories based on perceived threat levels. Open AI vowed to no longer allow Chat GPT to give legal advice to its users and as mentioned, Grok is supposedly no longer allowed to generate sexualised images of people. But, there is still no general statutory regulation of AI in the UK, and no gender-based measures have been implemented. It has already been reported that Grok Imagine, an AI service also owned by Musk, is still able to generate sexualised images of people.
Although there are no published statistics on the number of women and girls that have been sexually attacked using AI on X, one in three women and girls are likely to experience gender-based sexual violence in their lifetimes. The sexualised posts generated by Grok are only a small reflection of how objectification and violence against women and girls is beginning to seep into their online lives more and more due to the prevalence of AI.
So, should X be banned in the UK to ensure online safety for women and girls? With the current trend of sexualised or violent generative content on X, it is safe to say that it will continue to remain an unsafe space. Musk has a personal history of ignoring or inciting sexual violence or harassment against women. In 2022, Musk was found to have illegally fired eight engineers from his company, Space X, for raising concerns of sexual harassment and discrimination against women in the workplace. He also has a history of misleading the public with the claims he makes – in both 2018 and 2025 he was sued by The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for misleading statements he made on X.
The government is slow to act
Since Musk has shown himself to be a potentially untrustworthy person, it is fair to assume that he cannot solely be relied on to ensure the safety of X’s female users. The UK Government has also been slow to implement general protective online measures, taking until 2025 to make it mandatory to require legal identification to enter pornographic sites.
It seems like the only real option to lower rates of online sexual violence against women and girls would be to implement a nationwide ban of X for everyone in the UK. Although it may seem like a drastic measure, Australia recently banned social media for anyone under the age of sixteen to ensure their children are protected from potential harm that can be caused by social media. By banning X in the UK, it would not only severely reduce the number of sexualised images created by Grok, but it would also be a large step in preventing online sexual attacks against women and girls in general, as they are twenty-seven times more likely to be abused online than men.
An outright ban of X could also remove the online spaces that are more frequently being used by young men to bond over their hatred for women and girls – something that is increasingly becoming an issue on X – despite women being around only thirty percent of the app’s users.
With the app providing a platform for big names such as Andrew Tate to frequently vocalise their misogynistic opinions, as well as its facilitation of constant sexual attacks on women and girls, combined with the apathetic response from those running X, there would be little lost if the platform was banned.
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