'Abhorrent!' Online safety campaigner lambasts Elon Musk's X for 'endorsing creation of disgusting' AI images

Following mass outrage at the X platform owner Elon Musk, Grok has since placed a block on its creations to operate only for paying subscribers.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has also threatened an outright ban on X in the UK following the controversy, branding it "unlawful".

Asked by host Tom Harwood on whether the blame lies with the platform or the users creating such images, Mr Pursey told GB News: "I think it's both, let's be honest. So first of all, this is happening, this is deliberate.

"So this technology has been taught to do this. Somebody somewhere has said, yeah, it's okay to do this."

Interjecting Mr Pursey, Tom hit back: "It's not true because that's not how AI is trained. Grok will have been trained to do anything at all. Now, of course you can impose limits afterwards, but it's not like someone, somewhere at X AI deliberately said, I am going to make a bot that puts people in bikinis.

"This bot puts anyone in anything, it hasn't been specifically trained to do that thing. It's a general purpose image generation software. It's the users that are asking it to do the strange, specific thing."

Mr Pursey responded: "You're right to a point, but also you're wrong. Fundamentally, when you train your AI, I run an AI company, our AI company detects this harmful content and removes it. We tell our AI what to do, we also tell it what not to do.

"So whichever way you want to spin it at the end of the end of the day, X doesn't have to do this. They can stop it now."

Hitting out at the "disgusting" ability of the platform to create such images, the SafeToNet Chairman told GB News: "Today is not the first day this year you're going to be talking on your program about online harms. This is a nonsense. This goes on and on and on.

"And to a point. Keir Starmer is absolutely right. This is disgusting, it's abhorrent, it could be stopped. X is endorsing this technology.

"Now the farce is okay, if you haven't got the money you can't do it, but if you have got the money then you can do it. Where's the moral fortitude in that?"

Stressing that the ability to create the images can be stopped altogether rather than allowing paying subscribers to still use it, he added: "If your kitchen is being flooded you don't get a mop. What you do is you switch off the tap, don't you? It's so easy.

"They could stop this from happening straight away. There are people in the world that want to see this stuff, so there's other ways that technology can be deployed to stop it. We can make the devices safe.

"So let's not kid ourselves, there's technology that's creating this horrific content, but there's technology that can also stop it and block it."

Challenging Mr Pursey, Tom argued that there are "images being made of him" and he is "big enough and ugly enough not to care", as they can still be caught if they are paying subscribers.

Mr Pursey hit back: "This is a game of whack a mole, it's not just X. Let's say Keir Starmer does ban X, that's bold, let's see if he does do that. Another one will pop up tomorrow and another one will pop up tomorrow.

"And I like your fortitude Tom, that it doesn't harm you. Maybe one day when you perhaps you're more vulnerable, maybe when they do something to your body that makes implies you do things that you don't do in your private life, maybe you'll take a different view. But this isn't about necessarily celebrities being undressed, what about those children?

"What about the encouragement here of of individuals to look at child sexual abuse material? That can never, ever, ever be right.

"There can't be a single situation where that could be right, could there? For you, Tom, Fine. But not for the vulnerable, not for the young people."