David Lammy has said that US vice president JD Vance agrees that sexualised AI-generated deepfakes – such as those made using Elon Musk’s Grok – are “entirely unacceptable”.
The deputy prime minister told The Guardian that Mr Vance expressed concern about how artificial intelligence was being used to create “hyper-pornographied slop” online when they met in Washington on Thursday.
After discussing Greenland, Mr Lammy said: “I also raised with him the Grok issue and 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.
“He agreed with me that it was entirely unacceptable.”
Lammy said he raised Grok with Vance during a meeting in Washington. File pic: Reuters
Since the start of the new year, X users – mainly women – have reported that accounts have used Grok to generate images of them without clothing.
And earlier this week, the Internet Watch Foundation reported that criminals have been using Grok to create child sexual abuse imagery.
X appeared to have changed Grok’s settings in response, with a message displayed by the tool saying image editing and generation had been limited to paid subscribers.
But these changes were described as “insulting” by Downing Street, while Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said that X needed “to get a grip of” Grok, and he had asked media regulator Ofcom for “all options to be on the table”.
Appearing defiant, Musk later shared one X user’s post criticising the Labour government for apparently focusing on his platform, pointing to claims of other AI programmes creating non-sexualised images of women in bikinis.
“They want any excuse for censorship,” the tech billionaire said. Musk had also previously said on X that anyone using Grok to make illegal content would suffer the same consequences as if they had uploaded it.
In the interview with The Guardian, Mr Lammy said that he felt Mr Vance “recognised the very seriousness with which images of women and children could be manipulated in this way”.
The deputy prime minister then added: “He recognised how despicable, unacceptable, that is and I found him sympathetic to that position. And in fact, we’ve been in touch again, today, about this very serious issue.”
“He confirmed with me that he had seen that there had been some changes announced by X as of this morning.”
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Sources at the meeting in Washington also told the outlet that Mr Vance raised concerns about the use of AI and how it was fuelling “hyper-pornographied slop”.
As of writing, Mr Vance – who has been a long-standing proponent of AI technology – has not commented publicly on Grok.
