Elon Musk labels UK government ‘fascist’ as X faces possible ban amid Grok image controversy

Amid mounting pressure on X and Grok, Elon Musk has targetted the UK government for trying to supress free speech. The comment by Musk comes as UK government mulling to impose fines or a possible ban on X in the country after the company's AI chatbot Grok generated sexualized images of women and children at the behest of users.

As UK Ministers threatened a possible ban on X, Musk went on to claim that the social media earlier called Twitter has went on to become the most downloaded app on the country's app stores.

In response to a post on X, Musk wrote, “They just want to suppress free speech”

“They want any excuse for censorship” he said while replying to another post

Meanwhile, Musk also responded to a post by a user who stated that UK has the highest arrests for social media comments in the world. The billionaire while quoting the post wrote, “Why is the UK government so fascist?”

Musk also reposted a few posts that suggested that Grok wasn't the only AI app that could generated non-conensual deepfakes of users and even rivals like OpenAI and Google oblige to users request for generating images with people wearing bikini.

UK Technology secretary Liz Kendall had recently said that the country was looking at the possibility of banning access to X in the country.

“X needs to get a grip and get this material down,” Liz was quoted by The Guardian as saying, “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.”

Since then Musk has threatened users to not use Grok for illegal purposes while also suggesting that users should be held liable for generating such content and the platform should not be punished. Grok app has also faced the heat in various countries including in India and Indonesia.

Indonesia also banned the AI app in the country and summoned the X officials for a meeting. US senators have also penned an open letter to Google and Apple to remove the X and Grok app from their app stores over violating their terms by generating sexualized images.