A collective of over 75,000 cisgender women have urged the government to stop attacking trans people and tackle the “real threat” to women and girls by sanctioning X over its AI chatbot Grok.

Elon Musk’s companies X, formerly Twitter, and xAI, found themselves in international hot water this month after its AI model was used to generate sexualised images of women and young girls.

Several users have used the chatbot to modify images of individuals, predominantly women, as young as 12 to show them in a bikini.

The images have prompted international condemnation from governments and campaigners, many of which have threatened to impose sanctions on the platform if it does not restrict Grok’s ability to generate the images.

In the UK, the government called the content “absolutely appalling” and asked media regulator Ofcom to look into the issue.

Not In Our Name (NION) Women, a collective of cisgender women who stand in solidarity with the trans community, argued the ongoing situation proved demonstrably that the “real threat” to women and girls is not trans people, but from “systems that enable powerful men to act without meaningful accountability”.

In an open letter published on Friday (9 January), the group condemned the Labour government’s response to the controversy, especially when compared to how proactive it has been in attacking the trans community.

“For years, we’ve watched politicians express unfounded concern about trans people in bathrooms, changing rooms, and sports, claiming to protect women’s safety. Yet when a billionaire with enormous political influence creates technology that is actively being used to violate thousands of women and children right now, the response has been empty statements and promises to ‘look into it’,” a spokesperson wrote.

The government has yet to respond to calls for it to delete all departmental accounts on the platform after the Women and Equalities committee quit X on Wednesday (7 January).

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told the BBC she would back a potential ban on X in the UK should Ofcom recommend doing so, calling the recent situation “despicable and abhorrent”.

In a statement on Monday, Ofcom said it had made “urgent contact” with X and xAI to understand the steps it was taking to comply with online safety laws and would investigate “potential compliance issues” if necessary.

The Ofcom team themselves were subjected to harassment after a user prompted Grok to modify an image of its female staff members to undress them.

Grok controversy a ‘familiar pattern’ of abuse against women and girls, NION Women argue

NION argued in its open letter that the controversy with Grok is not a new threat, but a symptom of a “familiar pattern” of abuse against women and girls.

“When harm is abstract or hypothetical, trans people are treated as an urgent danger. When harm is real, document, and happening at scale, and when it benefits powerful men – and a powerful platform – the response becomes cautious, delayed, and procedural,” it wrote.

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