After UK ban talk, Australian senator claims rumours of discussions to ban X

Australian Senator Ralph Babet made a post on X just a few hours ago, claiming that he has heard whispers about high-level discussions to permanently ban X in the country. The United Australia Party senator warned that any such attempt should trigger “swift, fierce, and unmistakable” public backlash.

Babet’s warning comes as the UK government openly considers blocking X following a wave of disturbing incidents involving Grok, the platform’s AI chatbot. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has told media regulator Ofcom to keep “all options on the table” after investigators found child sexual abuse material created using Grok.

The Online Safety Act gives British officials power to impose fines worth billions of pounds or completely block access to platforms that fail to remove illegal content like child abuse material and revenge porn.

X has roughly 650 million users globally, with about 20 million in the UK alone. Starmer addressed the situation, telling Greatest Hits Radio that “X has got to get a grip of this” and calling the AI-generated images “wrong” and “unlawful”. Ofcom has already made “urgent contact” with X and warned it could launch a formal investigation.

The Grok controversy has been snowballing for weeks now. Thousands of women have found themselves targets of the AI tool, which has been used to digitally remove clothing from photos and create sexualized deepfakes.

More recently, Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons, told The Guardian she felt “horrified and violated” after Musk supporters used Grok to create fake sexual images of her. She described it as a form of revenge porn, saying fans even manipulated childhood photos of her.

The situation took another twist when St. Clair’s verification checkmark and premium subscription vanished without explanation just hours after she spoke out publicly. There’s already speculation that this might be a tit-for-tat situation, but until X provides clarification, everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

Whether Australia will actually move forward with any ban remains unclear. Babet provided no details about who’s supposedly having these discussions or how serious they might be. His track record includes opposing the government’s social media ban for under-16s, which he’s called a “Trojan Horse” for control.

Musk himself hasn’t really commented much on the news about X possibly being banned in the UK. However, he did repost a post by @teslaownersSV mentioning the news as well as noting that X is the #1 destination for unfiltered news in the country.

We’ll keep an eye out for any further developments and will post an update if there’s something to share.

Featured image generated with Gemini

We stand out from the tech-media crowd because we break news stories; we mainly bring you stuff that you won’t find anywhere in the mainstream tech media. Our stories have been picked up by some of the world’s most popular websites and media outlets—more info is available here.