Kendall says the decision by X last week to restrict the Grok AI deepfake tool to subscribers does not go anywhere near far enough.She goes on:Under the Online Safety Act, sharing intimate images without someone’s consent, or threatening to share them, including images of people in their underwear, is a criminal offence for individuals and for platforms.My predecessor [Peter Kyle] rightly made this a priority offence, so services have to take proactive action to stop this content from appearing in the first place.The Data Act, passed last year, made it a criminal offence to create or request the creation of nonconsensual and intimate images.And today I can announce to the house that this offence will be brought into force this week, and that I will make it a priority offence in the Online Safety Act.

This means individuals are committing a criminal offence if they create or seek to create such content, including on X.And anyone who does this should expect to face the full extent of the law.Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, has told MPs that the government will legislate to ban the supply of nudification apps, and that a law to make it illegal to create nonconsensual, intimate images, already on the statute book, will be brought into force this week.(See 4.54pm and 5.

05pm.) She was speaking in a Commons statement on the way the Grok AI app has allowed X users to digitally undress women and children, creating sexualised, deepfake images.Nadhim Zahawi was rejected for a peerage by the Conservatives just weeks before he defected to Reform UK, Tory sources have told the Guardian.No date has been set yet for when a major plan for defence spending will be published, the head of the armed forces has said.As PA Media reports, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the chief of the defence staff (CDS), also told the defence committee he was “confident” British soldiers would be as safe as possible if deployed into Ukraine on a peacekeeping mission once Russia’s invasion has drawn to an end.

A prisoner linked to Palestine Action who is on day 71 of a hunger strike has told a friend: “I’m dying.”For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.Kemi Badenoch is arguing that the proper response to dangerous material online is to stop children using social media.She posted this on X, referring to her call for the UK to adopt an Australian-style social media ban.We don’t ask nightclubs to serve orange squash to kids so they can have something to drink.

We say no kids in nightclubs,Social media is exactly the same,Social media is not a safe for children,Extreme content is rife, and the safeguards the companies have put in place are complex and woefully ineffective,It’s time to make sure children are protected from adult spaces.

The Government should focus on what matters, not banning companies they don’t like.This is from the Press Association’s parliamentary reporter Harry Taylor.Shouts of “shame” towards Tory shadow minister Julia Lopez after her attack on the Government over its response to Grok and X’s nudification of women and girls.Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, welcomed Kendall’s statement.But she called for more government to deal with “bot farms abroad”.

She said that, when the internet went down in Iran at the weekend, 1,300 bot accounts that support the SNP also went down.She said either there were a lot of SNP supporters in Iran at the time, or it was evidence of a “deliberate attempt to udnermine our democeracy and stir mischief”.In response to Lopez, Kendall said that when she talked about X being banned for UK users as a last resort, she was just pointing out what the law said.And she said it was Lopez’s party, the Conservatives, who passed the Online Safety Act.She said that she was not threatening freedom of speech; she was just talking about “upholding British values”.

And she claimed that what the government is doing is similar to the Take it Down Act signed into law by President Trump.She said that she hoped there would be cross-party agreement on this problem in the Commons.And she claimed, from their reaction, some Tory MPs were alarmed by the tone that Lopez adopted.Julia Lopez, the shadow technology secretary, was responding to Kendall on behalf of the Conservatives.She said people were right to be outraged about the way Grok AI was being used to digitally undress people.

She said laws were already in place protect people, and she said she would await the outcome of the Ofcom inquiry,But, at that point in her speech she switched from being supportive to being critical,Lopez said she was worried about the government over-reacting,I accept the enforcement threat must be credible, but its use must also be proportionate,She said the suggestion that X might be banned for users in the UK was serious.

She went on:Since its invention, the internet and social media have been misused, often criminally, by people traffickers, paedophiles, fraudsters, the gutter dwellers of our society.Nobody is on their side.But government has never before proposed to wholesale block TikTok, Google or Facebook for the frequent and often flagrant misuse of their sites.It is an extraordinarily serious move against a platform that can be used for good for uncovering scandal, sparking democratic revolution and allowing day to day the free exchange of ideas, including ideas we don’t like.It is that very power for good that sees Iran’s mullahs reach to block the internet in the face of courageous protesters.

Lopez also said the production of a lot of this material sat in “legal grey area”.What was happening on X was a “modern-day iteration of an old problem”, she said.From crude drawing to Photoshop, Grok is not the only tool capable of generating false or offensive imagery, and not all of this content will cross the threshold into illegality.Plenty of it is sick, degrading, morally repugnant.But it does not cross the criminal threshold.

Lopez said there was a risk that further action could distract the authorities from dealing with more abhorrent and dangerous crimes.And she argued that heavy-handed action by the UK could prompt retaliation from the Trump administration.Lopez ended by saying that, while dealing with online abuse was important, the government should be focusing more on problems in the real world.At the start of her speech Lopez was heard in silence, but as she went on there were some protests, as if MPs were surprised by how far she divereged from the government’s line.UPDATE: Lopez also said:The government’s appendage swinging over the weekend was extremely serious.

Ministers mooted as an urgent remedy the banning of a site of 21 million monthly users in this country, despite another minister guffawing that banning X was conspiracy theory number 3627.Kendall concluded:I believe, and the government believes, AI is a transformative technology which has the power and potential to bring around extraordinary and welcome change, creating jobs and growth, diagnosing and treating diseases, helping children learn at school, tackling climate change and so much more besides.But, in order to seize these opportunities, people must feel confident that they and their children are safe online and that AI is not used for destructive and abusive ends.Many tech companies want to and are acting responsibly, but where they do not, we must and we will act.Innovation should serve humanity, not degrade it.

So we’ll leave no stone unturned in our determination to stamp out these demeaning, degrading and illegal images.If that means strengthening the existing laws, we are prepared to do so because this government stands on the side of decency.Kendall said she understood why many people want the government to stop using X.It would keep this under review, she said.But she said there are 19 million X users in the UK, more than a quarter of whom say they use it as a primary source of news.

Kendall challenged opposition MPs to back the government’s stance on X.And, with just one Reform UK MP sitting in the chamber, she said that if Reform continued to call for the Online Safety Act to be reapealed, they would be “shamefully supporting scrapping protections that keep women and children safe”.And Kendall said she could confirm the government would use the crime and policing bill, which is currently going through Parliament, to criminalise nudification apps.This new criminal offence will make it illegal for companies to supply tools designed to create non-consensual intimate images, targetting the problem at its source.Kendall said that Ofcom has announced an investigation into X.

She said that Ofcom should set out a timetable for the investigation “as soon as possible”,But, she said, Ofcom did not have to wait until it was over before it acted,“They can choose to act sooner to ensure this abhorrent and illegal material cannot be shared on their platform,” she said,And she said Ofcom would have government support “to use the full powers which parliament has given them,Kendall says the decision by X last week to restrict the Grok AI deepfake tool to subscribers does not go anywhere near far enough.

She goes on:Under the Online Safety Act, sharing intimate images without someone’s consent, or threatening to share them, including images of people in their underwear, is a criminal offence for individuals and for platforms.My predecessor [Peter Kyle] rightly made this a priority offence, so services have to take proactive action to stop this content from appearing in the first place.The Data Act, passed last year, made it a criminal offence to create or request the creation of nonconsensual and intimate images.And today I can announce to the house that this offence will be brought into force this week, and that I will make it a priority offence in the Online Safety Act.This means individuals are committing a criminal offence if they create or seek to create such content, including on X.

And anyone who does this should expect to face the full extent of the law.