President Donald Trump's free speech tsar has compared the United Kingdom's threat to block X to Vladimir Putin's Russia. Sarah Rogers, the US state department's undersecretary for public diplomacy, wrote on the platform that Great Britain was 'contemplating a Russia-style X ban to protect them from bikini images'. She also criticised the country for failing to ban marriages between cousins, which she suggested was linked to 'honour' killings.
The UK's Office of Communication (Ofcom) is carrying out an 'expedited assessment' of X and xAI's response to its chatbot Grok's manipulation of images to create undressed individuals and sexualised images of children. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has said ministers would stand by the regulator if it decides to block access to the platform, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he was leaving 'all options' on the table.
Owner Elon Musk has accused the UK of becoming 'fascist', and Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has threatened to put forward legislation to sanction both Starmer and the UK if X is blocked. However, Vice President JD Vance reportedly agreed with the UK government that the sexualised images are 'entirely unacceptable', according to Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, who raised the issue during a meeting last week.
X has since agreed to limit its image editing tool to paying users, but a spokesperson for the prime minister described the move as 'insulting the victims of misogyny and sexual violence', adding that 'it's not a solution'. Starmer has called on X to 'get their act together' amid concerns about AI-generated sexualised images on the site.
