US State Department Threatens UK over Probe into Elon Musk's X

So let's just take a moment to recall how we got here: Grok had the ability to create sexualized deep fake images of people. This was shown to not distinguish sufficiently between adults and children, creating sexualized deep fake images of children.

Unsurprisingly, outrage ensued across the political spectrum - anything associated with facilitating child abuse is politically toxic.

xAI responded by making this feature only accessible to paying accounts - leading to the response that they believe that producing sexualised images of children is ok provided that you pay for it.

It is absolutely unsurprising that the UK Gov is taking action. As far as I can tell, popular opinion is that Grok has crossed a line here - abstract free speech arguments don't work that well when people see it affecting their partners and daughters.

X could be banned from the UK, under the Online Safety Act - but that is the maximum sanction. Banning Grok is more likely. The OSA was brought in by the previous government (Conservative - centre right), and has broad political support.

There is fundamentally a difference of approach between the USA and Europe (inc the UK). In the US, you tend to weight free speech more highly, and consider harms resulting from non-protected speech (like inciting riots or murder) to be legally an individual matter. Over here we take a slightly different approach, focused more on the entire system that enables the harm. Hence under some circumstances we restrict the transmission of speech that facilitates the harm.

In this case, requiring a change from Grok to comply with the OSA not offer this facility in the UK seems appropriate, with appropriate sanctions if they fail to comply.

Usually i'd be outraged at American overreach, but this is ofcom so i say more power to anyone who can bring them down a few notches. The same goes to Starmers government whose attitude to free speech seems to be that it's a necessary evil (to not lose elections), and something, along with the nhs that they need to pay lip service to every now and then.

I'm not getting my hopes up though. It's entirely possible that ofcom will just carve exemptions for large American companies, using their new powers to go after smaller, easier targets - which is what has been predicted since that awful online "safety" bill first came up.

But I'm not dumb either. While i do believe the current administration views European free speech rights with contempt i'm under no illusions this is the primary motivation behind this threat.