How Elon Musk galvanized the UK’s online safety regime

The U.K. was taking a wait-and-see approach to online safety… then along came Grok.

By MIZY CLIFTON
in London

Photo illustration by Ellen Boonen/POLITICO

MPs hoping for a gentle return to Westminster from Christmas recess this year had barely settled back into their parliamentary offices when photos of two female Cabinet ministers in bikinis began circulating on X.

The pictures were fake – generated by Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok. Over 11 days, between Dec. 29 to Jan. 8, the tool produced an estimated 3 million sexualized images, including 23,000 that appeared to depict children, according to researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the situation “disgusting” and said the U.K.’s online safety regulator Ofcom had his full backing to intervene. Musk, a longtime critic of Starmer, leapt into the fray, reposting a deepfake of the prime minister in a bikini.

Little did Starmer or Musk know at the time, the tsunami of Grok-generated images would prove to be a catalytic moment for the U.K., setting off a chain of events that saw the U.K. government hand itself new power over online safety legislation, and could see British kids kicked off social media altogether.

How did it come to this?

The pre-Grok era

Before the Grok drama Britain’s online safety regime was already under strain, but the government was wary of calls to go further on online harm legislation

Campaigners, who’d started pushing for a return to the drawing board within little more than a year of the country’s new Online Safety Act making it onto the statute books, accused the Labour government of cozying up to Big Tech and the media regulator Ofcom of failing to exercise its new powers.

The mood around Parliament wasn’t much better.

Last July, MPs on the influential Science, Innovation and Technology committee warned that many parts of the Act were “already out of date” and would fail to prevent a repeat of the kind of misinformation-fuelled public disorder seen during the Southport riots the previous summer.

A poster featuring Elon Musk, calling for users of his X social media platform to delete their accounts due to the AI chatbot Grok’s image-creation feature. | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

It urged ministers to pass new legislation explicitly covering generative AI services – a recommendation the government rejected a month later, on the basis that amending the Act before it was fully in force risked ”complicat[ing] and undermin[ing]” implementation.

“The vibe has very much been one of ‘trust the process,’” Owen Bennett, who led international online safety at Ofcom until December 2025 and now works as an independent digital policy consultant, said. Various parts of the OSA took time to come into force, but now key duties are in force, that “grace period” is passed, Bennett said.

Pre-Grok, the U.K. government was also clearly signaling that it didn’t intend to follow Australia’s lead in banning social media for children, with a spokesperson for No.10 Downing Street saying in December there were no plans to implement a ban and “it’s important we protect children while letting them benefit safely from the digital world, without cutting off essential services or isolating the most vulnerable.”

Victory lap

Although Musk was initially defiant, X did eventually back down. Faced with shutdowns and threats of legal action, X agreed to restrict Grok’s image-generation function in jurisdictions where sexualized deepfakes are illegal.

Starmer claimed a victory, and he hasn’t stopped claiming it. His hardline approach to Grok appeared to enjoy public backing: polling by More in Common in January, reported by The Guardian, found that 58 percent of Brits thought X should be blocked in the U.K. if it didn’t crack down on AI-generated nonconsensual images.

The fight with Grok and X has become a frequent refrain. As recently as last month Starmer referred to “the fight that we had with Grok” in the Commons. Just last week, Tech Secretary Liz Kendall listed “standing up to Grok and X” as an example of how she is protecting children online.

X did not respond when contacted by POLITICO for comment.

Window of opportunity

Post-Grok, government’s concerns about undermining the OSA with new legislation seemed to disappear.

In February a clutch of online safety-related announcements fronted by the prime minister himself saw the government move to close precisely one of the “legal loopholes” the committee had warned about, by inserting a clause into the Crime and Policing Bill (now Act) that grants ministers sweeping powers to amend the Online Safety Act near-unilaterally for the purpose of tackling illegal AI-generated content.

In this photo illustration a iPhone screen displays Elon Musk’s repost on his social media platform X regarding criticism from British Prime Minister Kier Starmer about his AI tool Grok. | Anna Barclay/Getty Images

“The action we took on Grok sent a clear message that no platform gets a free pass,” Keir Starmer said.

Smartphone Free Childhood, a U.K.-based charity advocating for delaying children’s access to smartphones and social media, saw an opening.

“We realized this was our moment,” Smartphone Free Childhood’s co-founder and director Daisy Greenwell said. The hope was that Starmer’s newfound willingness to name and shame X might extend to other platforms, and beyond the specific issue of AI-generated intimate image abuse.

The charity, which describes itself as a grassroots movement, circulated an email template via its 100,000-person strong network of WhatsApp groups, Greenwell said.

Within days MPs were inundated with messages from concerned parents urging them to raise the social media minimum age to 16.

A group of 61 Labour backbenchers including Education Committee chair Helen Hayes wrote to Starmer on Jan. 19 calling on the government to “show leadership” by implementing an Australia-style ban.

Less than six weeks after a No. 10 spokesperson had shut down suggestions that the country might soon follow Australia’s lead by banning social media for under-16s – Technology Secretary Liz Kendall announced plans for a wide-ranging consultation on the subject. The consultation promised to look at whether banning kids from social media could be a good idea, alongside a range of other measures.

Moment of clarity

“Policymakers and regulators had understood the risks in theory for years, but the scale and speed of the harm caused by Grok made clear they could no longer afford to move slowly,” he added.

The Grok episode “crystallized” how technology products are being launched without safety guardrails, the consequences of which “can escalate at enormous scale almost overnight,” Imran Ahmed, CEO for the Center for Countering Digital Hate said.

Anna Barclay/Getty Images

A Department for Science, Innovation and Technology spokesperson said: “The Government’s work on children’s online safety has been long‑standing and evidence‑led – not driven by any single incident or campaign.”

“This includes mandating last year that porn sites introduce age checks to block children from adult content – which has led to 8 million people in the UK accessing these sites being age checked every day,” they added.

“We have been clear for some time though that we need to go further and faster to protect children online. The consultation reflects growing concern from parents, and experts about the impact of social media on young people’s wellbeing – and its results will help make sure our next step, is the right step.”

What comes next?

The government’s consultation on children’s online wellbeing closes today, and in three months’ time it will report back on exactly what it plans to do.

In the run-up to the consultation closing, the government has already made some limited concessions. It has already committed to introducing “some form of age or functionality-based restriction for under-16s” in a last-ditch concession to crusading members of the House of Lords, who forced the issue via amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (now Act).

Still, this could mean anything from an outright ban to restricting specific design features like infinite scroll. Delivering the outcome will likely mean “comprehensive policy work” for Ofcom on top of its existing responsibilities, the regulator’s group director for online safety Oliver Griffiths said earlier this month.

Child safety groups, politicians, and even police chiefs have published their submissions to the consultation as it draws to a close, all of them calling for the government to get tougher kids’ safety on social media, although not all are in favor of a full ban.

As the government mulls the submissions, Starmer’s future as prime minister has become perilous, and his rivals could add fresh political fuel to the idea of a social media ban for kids. Labour leadership hopefuls Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting have both expressed support in the past for age-restricting social media.

One way or another, the government will have to announce something new on how it plans to keep kids safer online and social media companies, including Musk’s X, will have to play ball — or else gear up for another fight.