A Trump administration official says “nothing is off the table” if the United Kingdom moves forward with a crackdown on Elon Musk’s X over concerns about AI-generated sexually explicit deepfake images on the platform, particularly those targeting women.
Speaking Tuesday in an interview with GB News, Sarah B. Rogers, the U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, warned the U.K. against a potential ban of X and said the United States will use a “full range of tools” to protect free speech.
RELATED STORY | How to tell the difference between a deepfake video and a real one
“What the British government wants isn’t a reasonable, safe, online, discursive environment for women — or whatever it claims,” Rogers said. “If the British government cared about women’s safety it would’ve acted differently on grooming gangs.”
“What the British government wants is the ability to curate the public square, to suppress political viewpoints it dislikes. And that is why it has targeted X for a potential ban even though other AI widgets afford similar capabilities,” she added. “X has a political valence that the British government is antagonistic to — doesn’t like — and that’s what’s really going on.”
Her comments come one day after Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok — which is integrated into X — over concerns about explicit images it can generate.
FROM THE ARCHIVES | Why Deepfake Pornography Is So Hard To Stop
The U.K. then announced plans to enforce a law that makes it illegal for companies to provide tools that can create non-consensual sexualized images, including through Grok.
“The Data Act, passed last year, made it a criminal offence to create — or request the creation of — non-consensual intimate images,” Liz Kendall, U.K. secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, said in a statement.. “And 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.”
Following global criticism over sexualized deepfakes of people — including women and minors — Grok last week restricted its image creation and editing tools to paying subscribers. Opponents, however, argue the measure fell short of solving the issue.
WATCH | How deepfake technology works
