A GB News guest has defended an X ban in Britain after Sir Keir Starmer flirted with the idea of outlawing the platform altogether.
Last week, No10 threatened a crackdown on the social media network over its AI bot, Grok, being able to generate pornography and child abuse images.
As a result, the social media site attracted a flurry of controversy with Mr Musk taking aim at Labour for wanting “any excuse for censorship”.
While an Ofcom investigation has been launched into the matter, GB News guests Maxwell Marlowe, a director at the Adam Smith Institute, and political commentator Fahima Mohamed debated whether Britain should consider the ban.
Mr Marlowe argued a ban would be a “gross overstatement of Government power and could do a lot of harm to discourse and civil unity in the UK”.
However, he agreed the AI-generated images are “completely wrong” and refused to accept that Mr Musk’s attempt to limit the use of the bot to paid subscribers would fix the issue.
Demanding safeguards, he added: “The UK actually needs to enforce its own laws on what we call CSAM, or child sexually abusive material.
But Ms Mohamed disagreed with the public affairs expert over his view on the ban and said the AI-generated images are propagating harm.
Ms Mohamed disagreed with the public affairs expert
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GB NEWS
She told GB News: “This isn’t about banning opinions or policing political speech. It’s about a platform that has enabled industrial scale sexual abuse, nullify deepfakes of women and even reports involving children through an AI tool built into the service.
“That’s not free speech, that’s harm, and it’s illegal. And the UK has an online safety regime for exactly this reason.
“Platforms have a duty to prevent and remove restrictions and, and make sure that, at the end of the day, they have to meet the standards.
“Fines and warnings aren’t enough. Access restriction becomes the last resort, but it’s actually necessary.”
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall issued a warning to Elon Musk | PA
But Mr Marlowe, although he admitted he partially agreed with Ms Mohamed, said people will continue to “try and get around” a theoretical X ban.
He continued: “We can see this quite a lot with actually the current restrictions the Government has placed on the platform as well as other platforms.
“A lot of people use VPNs, virtual private networks, for example, to get around a lot of these bands.
“So the actual harm mitigation would be quite limited.”
He added, given the concern over free speech in Britain, a ban “would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
While other AI platforms are able to generate the same sexually-explicit images, only X has been subject to the Ofcom interrogation so far.
“Could you imagine for this for the Prime Minister, especially trying to ban a platform which, let’s be honest, has been quite critical and the owner has been quite critical of him,” Mr Marlowe said.
A ban “would be destroying the public square for debate for holding the Government accountable”, he blasted.
On Friday, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has promised she would support Ofcom if it decides to ban X in the case it failed to comply with UK law.
“Sexually manipulating images of women and children is despicable and abhorrent,” Ms Kendall declared.
The broadcasting regulation body confirmed it was carrying out an “expedited assessment” into the platform and had responded to an urgent request on Monday.