Good morning. Last week, the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said: “We cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these demeaning and degrading images, which are disproportionately aimed at women and girls.” Her words came in reaction to the growing scandal of Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool being used to digitally undress photos of women and children to create public deepfaked sexualised images of them without their consent.
The row rumbled on through the weekend, with the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, telling the Guardian on Saturday that JD Vance, the US vice-president, agreed that the proliferation of AI-generated sexualised images of women and children was “entirely unacceptable”. Other government ministers insisted a ban on X was a possibility and Musk fired back that “they just want to suppress free speech”.
