Ofcom Weighed Grok Court Order, Bar Too High: MLex

Ofcom considered asking a court for an urgent order over sexualised deepfakes made with Grok, the chatbot built into X, but the legal threshold stopped it acting immediately, the regulator’s chief executive told MPs on 20 October, according to MLex. The specialist legal news service reported that Melanie Dawes made the admission during a parliamentary evidence session.

The point matters for anyone worried about AI image abuse online. It suggests that the UK’s emergency lever against a platform, an interim court order cutting off payments or access, is hard to pull, even in a case Ofcom says it handled as a matter of urgency.

In brief

Ofcom considered seeking an urgent court order over Grok sexual deepfakes on X, but the legal bar was too high, Melanie Dawes told MPs, MLex reports.
She called for changes to the Online Safety Act’s interim business disruption powers, according to MLex.
Ofcom’s investigation into X, opened on 12 January, is still under way; it has made no finding.

What Dawes told MPs

The session was a Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee hearing on “The work of Ofcom”, with Dawes and Ofcom chair Sir Ian Cheshire as witnesses, according to Parliament’s listing. No transcript had been published when TSN checked, so the account below relies on MLex.

MLex reported that “the UK online regulator considered seeking an urgent court order over sexualized AI deepfakes generated using X’s chatbot Grok, but the legal threshold prevented immediate intervention.” Dawes “called for changes to the Online Safety Act’s interim business disruption powers, and defended the pace of the regulator’s ongoing investigation into X,” it added. MLex has not said, in the part TSN could read, what changes she proposed.

The powers in question

Business disruption measures are the Online Safety Act’s heaviest tool. On its investigation page, Ofcom says that in the most serious cases of ongoing non-compliance it can apply to a court, which “could impose an order, on an interim or full basis, requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring internet service providers to block access to a site in the UK.”

The bar is set in the law. “The court may only impose such orders where appropriate and proportionate to prevent significant harm to individuals in the UK,” Ofcom says. Separately, if an investigation finds a company has broken the law, Ofcom can impose fines “of up to £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.”

Where the X investigation stands

Ofcom opened its formal investigation into X on 12 January 2026, after reports that the Grok account was being used to create and share undressed images of people and sexualised images of children. It is examining whether X met its duties to protect UK users from illegal content.

On 15 January, Ofcom noted that “X has said it has implemented measures to prevent the Grok account from being used to create intimate images of people,” but said “our formal investigation remains ongoing.” It also said it was assessing whether there were potential compliance issues with xAI, Grok’s developer. Under the Act, Ofcom must issue a provisional decision, and hear the company’s response, before any final ruling.

Our read

This is TSN’s analysis. If the interim route is as hard to use as Dawes suggested, Ofcom’s leverage over fast-moving AI harms rests on investigations that take months. For compliance teams, the signal is that the government may be asked to lower the bar. The next markers are the published transcript and any provisional decision on X.