UK nudification app ban won’t apply to Elon Musk’s Grok

LONDON — The U.K. government’s upcoming ban on nudification apps won’t apply to general-purpose AI tools like Elon Musk’s Grok, according to Tech Secretary Liz Kendall.

The ban will “apply to applications that have one despicable purpose only: to use generative AI to turn images of real people into fake nude pictures and videos without their permission,” Kendall said in a letter to Science, Innovation and Technology committee chair Chi Onwurah published Wednesday.

Grok, which is made by Musk’s AI company xAI but is also accessible inside his social media platform X, has sparked a political uproar because it has been used to create a wave of sexualized nonconsensual deepfakes, many targeting women and some children.

But Grok can be used to generate a wide range of images and has other functionalities, including text generation, so does not have the sole purpose of generating sexualized or nude images.

The U.K. government announced its plan to ban nudification apps in December, before the Grok controversy took off, but Kendall has given it as an example of ways that the government is cracking down on AI-generated intimate image abuse. Kendall said the nudification ban will be put into effect using the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently passing through committee stage.

The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology did not immediately respond when contacted by POLITICO for comment.

The U.K.’s media regulator Ofcom launched an investigation into X on Monday to determine whether the platform has complied with its duties under the Online Safety Act to protect British users from illegal content. The U.K, government has said Ofcom has its full support to use whatever enforcement tools it deems fit, which could include blocking X in the U.K. or issuing a fine.