The New Statesman

Finally, finally, Kirstama is fighting back against Elon Musk after a year of being publicly bullied by the world's richest man.

Downing Street is legislating against Musk, against X, against Grock, his

artificial intelligence. The government announced yesterday in the House of Commons,

Liz Kendall, the technology minister, making non-consensual intimate images is going to become a

criminal offence this week. It's decisive, it's a media, and it's trying to confront a really quite serious

problem. You've probably seen, if you're a Twitter user, ex-user, this swarm, right, of sexualized

suggestive images on the platform. The way it works, it's a bit of a meme. Someone tweets

something, people in the replies, at GROC, put this person in a bikini. And it's

happening to public facing women. It's being done to children. And it's also actually being done to

the Prime Minister, Kirstama, Elon Musk himself, sharing one of those images in recent days. And for me,

this story, this change of heart of the British government, it touches on so many different areas.

It touches on free speech.

It touches on the greater or lesser extent to which we should seek to control, regulate AI, if at all.

It touches on power, the power of the British state versus a tech giant and the world's

richest man, Elon Musk, but also on foreign policy.

And really, this is a departure in form, I think, for the British government that has sought

previously to sort of put an arm around the Americans, try and be close and influence

behind the scenes.

That's changing.

That's changing quite dramatically. So just a little bit of context on this. First of all, I would say

a bit of a caveat, I don't want to ban X. I think that's an authoritarian move. I think it's an

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