Sarah Rogers, under-secretary for public diplomacy at the US State Department, accused ministers of wanting to usher in a \u201cRussia-style ban\u201d of the social media platform over its deepfake pictures<\/a>. <\/p>\n Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the Government would back regulator Ofcom if it decided to implement a ban on accessing X due to its Grok AI image-making tool, which has been used to create sexualised pictures of women and children against their wishes.<\/p>\n The threats were given a boost when Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese backed Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s call for X to take action, branding the deepfakes<\/a> as \u201ccompletely abhorrent\u201d.<\/p>\n Albanese warned that \u201cglobal citizens deserve better\u201d.<\/p>\n Reports over the weekend suggested that Downing Street was looking to co-ordinate a wider response from the international community against the website, including Canada as well as Australia.<\/p>\n But on Sunday, Canada\u2019s minister for artificial intelligence and digital innovation, Evan Solomon, ruled out an outright ban of X, but said the Liberal government was seeking to amend legislation to outlaw intimate deepfake images without a person\u2019s consent.<\/p>\n And in a sign of increasing concerns over the UK\u2019s threats to X, the US administration has attacked the plans, warning they threaten free speech. <\/p>\n Rogers said the UK was \u201ccontemplating a Russia-style X ban, to protect [women] from bikini images\u201d.<\/p>\n It followed a string of attacks from tech tycoon and billionaire owner of X, Elon Musk<\/a>, who has accused the UK Government of being \u201cfascist\u201d and trying to curb free speech.<\/p>\n Responding to a message containing an AI-generated image of Starmer in a bikini, posted by another user, which asked why other AI systems that could create similar fake images were not also being banned, Musk said: \u201cThey just want to suppress free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida threatened to bring legislation to sanction the Prime Minister and \u201cBritain as a whole\u201d if the UK bans the platform.<\/p>\n But Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy<\/a> claimed US Vice President JD Vance<\/a> was sympathetic to efforts to tackle the Grok-produced images.<\/p>\n Lammy, who met Vance in the US on Thursday, told The Guardian he raised the issue of Grok \u201cand 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\u201d.<\/p>\n \t\tYour next read<\/p>\n
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