?

Billionaire Elon Musk has accused the United Kingdom government of seeking to curb free speech as British ministers stepped up threats to block his website X after its AI tool, Grok, generated sexual images of women and children without consent.

Government ministers in the UK have demanded action against the company unless the function to create sexually harassing images is removed.

On Saturday, the South African-born technology tycoon Musk, who became a citizen of the United States in 2002, said opponents of his platform X are using "any excuse for censorship" and accused the UK government of being "fascist".

"They just want to suppress free speech," Musk wrote on X.

After a backlash over the obscene digitalmanipulation feature last week, the response from Musk's xAI, which operates Grok and X, was initially to simply insist that "legacy media lies".

Then on Friday, X barred nonsubscribers from generating images, restricting the tool to paying users.

Some governments and critics say that keeping the tool available to subscribers does not solve the problem, and many countries around the world have condemned the feature.

After meeting US Vice-President JD Vance on Sunday, UK Secretary of State for Justice David Lammy said Vance views Grok's sexualized manipulation of images of women and children as "entirely unacceptable".

Lammy told The Guardian newspaper he raised "the horrendous, horrific situation in which this new technology is allowing deepfakes and the manipulation of images of women and children, which is just absolutely abhorrent".

News reports last week warned thousands of women have been targeted by users of the AI tool, which began by altering fully clothed photos to make them appear in micro bikinis and then escalated to more extreme manipulations.

The UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall said Friday that ministers are considering blocking access to X.

Ofcom, the UK regulator for online, broadcasting, and telecommunications industries, was last week reported to be seeking answers from the X platform. Kendall said she expected the regulator to announce action within "days not weeks".

"X needs to get a grip and get this material down," she said. "And I would remind them that in the Online Safety Act, there are backstop powers to block access to services if they refuse to comply with the law for people in the UK. And if Ofcom decides to use those powers, they would have the full backing of the government."

Ireland's media regulator said it had notified the European Commission that Grok was being used to create digitally undressed images of women and children to be shared on X.

Speaking on Saturday, Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese echoed the UK's concerns. "Global citizens deserve better", he said.

He noted that Australia recently barred social media use for under16s.

"The use of generative artificial intelligence to exploit or sexualize people without their consent is abhorrent," he said.

jonathan@mail.chinadailyuk.com