{"id":50961,"date":"2026-05-26T02:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/50961\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T02:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:59:07","slug":"how-elon-musk-galvanized-the-uks-online-safety-regime-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/50961\/","title":{"rendered":"How Elon Musk galvanized the UK\u2019s online safety regime\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A poster featuring Elon Musk, calling for users of his X social media platform to delete their accounts due to the AI chatbot Grok\u2019s image-creation feature. | Justin Tallis\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

It urged ministers to pass new legislation explicitly covering generative AI services \u2013 a recommendation the government rejected a month later, on the basis that amending the Act before it was fully in force risked \u201dcomplicat[ing] and undermin[ing]\u201d implementation. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe vibe has very much been one of \u2018trust the process,\u2019\u201d 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 \u201cgrace period\u201d is passed, Bennett said. <\/p>\n

Pre-Grok, the U.K. government was also clearly signaling that it didn\u2019t intend to follow Australia\u2019s<\/a> 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 \u201cit\u2019s important we protect children while letting them benefit safely from the digital world, without cutting off essential services or isolating the most vulnerable.\u201d <\/p>\n

Victory lap<\/p>\n

Although Musk was initially defiant, X did eventually back down. Faced with shutdowns and threats of legal action, X agreed to restrict Grok\u2019s image-generation function in jurisdictions where sexualized deepfakes are illegal. <\/p>\n

Starmer claimed a victory, and he hasn\u2019t stopped claiming it. His hardline approach to Grok appeared to enjoy public backing: polling by More in Common in January, reported by The Guardian<\/a>, found that 58 percent of Brits thought X should be blocked in the U.K. if it didn\u2019t crack down on AI-generated nonconsensual images. <\/p>\n

The fight with Grok and X has become a frequent refrain. As recently as last month Starmer referred to \u201cthe fight that we had with Grok\u201d in the Commons. Just last week, Tech Secretary Liz Kendall listed \u201cstanding up to Grok and X\u201d as an example of how she is protecting children online. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A poster featuring Elon Musk, calling for users of his X social media platform to delete their accounts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[30188,9087,1069,140,6364,30189,10512,9478,30190,8339,5095,225,1109,134,3480,30191,2899],"class_list":["post-50961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-xai","tag-andy-burnham","tag-australia","tag-big-tech","tag-elon-musk","tag-grok","tag-helen-hayes","tag-keir-starmer","tag-liz-kendall","tag-oliver-griffiths","tag-online-safety","tag-platforms","tag-safety","tag-social-media","tag-technology","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wes-streeting","tag-xai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}