Last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions was my first official time standing up in the Chamber to put a question directly to the Prime Minister. I raised concerns about the use of Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, to create non-consensual sexualised images – including images of women being digitally stripped without their consent.
I was glad, and reassured, by the Prime Minister’s response. He was absolutely right to say that what has been happening on X is disgusting and shameful, and to make clear that this government will not back down when UK law is being broken.
Stripping women naked without consent – whether in real life or online – is abuse. That should not be controversial, and it should not be optional for tech companies to address. The fact that X initially chose to restrict this behaviour only to paying users was deeply concerning. You cannot monetise abuse and expect it to be acceptable.
Within minutes of my question at PMQs, people were testing Grok by asking it to generate sexualised images of me. Fortunately, it does not appear to have responded, which suggests that changes may already have been made. But that only underlines the point: these harms are real, immediate, and targeted – and women in public life experience them constantly.
What matters most to me is not winning an argument with a tech billionaire, but demonstrating that UK law can and will be enforced. When pressure is applied, these platforms do change their behaviour. That is important, because for too long there has been an assumption that tech companies are untouchable or beyond the reach of democratic accountability. They are not.
This issue is also much bigger than one platform or one tool. The next challenge we face is protecting our elections, tackling deepfakes, and dealing with algorithms that shape what people see and believe – often without transparency or oversight. If we fail to act, trust in our democracy and our online spaces will continue to be eroded.
This is about setting clear boundaries: abuse is abuse, consent matters, and the law applies online just as it does offline. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to action, and I will continue to push for strong enforcement and proper safeguards – because people deserve to feel safe, both online and off.
Read the full article here: Starmer ‘won’t back down’ in fight with Musk over Grok AI deepfakes