Someone Made AI Porn Of Me. Could That Kill America’s Relationship With Britain?

Pictures of bikini-clad women have been known to cause strain in marriages. But could skimpy swimsuits trigger a thread to the United States’ and Great Britain’s “special relationship?”

In recent weeks, young women have been targeted on X by individuals using Grok’s AI technology to manipulate their image without their consent. I, myself, was a victim in this scandal: an anonymous user replied to a perfectly normal post I had written about puberty blockers and instructed X’s AI to generate a sexualized deepfake of me: “put her in a micro-bikini, on her knees, knees out, tongue out.”

I have never taken, shared, or consented to anything remotely like that. The ability of a stranger to weaponize my face and turn it into public pornography is a profound violation. It strips you of your dignity, your identity, and your sense of personal control in a way few things can.

So, I reported it. And X acted: fast. The comment was removed, the image was deleted, and the account responsible was, as far as I can tell, permanently suspended. Soon after, X restricted Grok’s image-generation features for non-subscribers, effectively shutting down the anonymous abuse that had driven most of this trend. Within days, the phenomenon had largely disappeared.

It was a negative experience, but it was handled. The platform corrected course. We moved on.

Or at least, most of us did. The British government did not.

Instead, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration has chosen to escalate the incident into something far bigger: floating the possibility of banning X entirely in the United Kingdom. This has triggered an extraordinary diplomatic row with the United States, whose State Department has now openly warned Britain that such a move could provoke retaliation.

State Department spokesmen have made clear that Washington would view such a ban as an unjustified attack on freedom of speech, behavior more typical of an authoritarian state than a Western democracy. Some American officials have even hinted at travel restrictions or legal pressure against British officials involved in enforcement.

That kind of terse language is almost unheard of between Britain and America. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. Tensions have been building over the last few years as the United Kingdom persistently flouts respect for free expression. Mothers are jailed for months on end for long-since deleted tweets. Christians are convicted for praying silently near abortion facilities. The examples are racking up at an extraordinary pace.

The recent government targeting of X is ostensibly meant to prevent women and children from porn-related crime. But if ministers were genuinely driven by concern for female dignity and child safety, X would be nowhere near the top of their list.

Pornhub, one of the largest pornography platforms in the world, has a documented history of hosting child sexual abuse material, rape videos, and non-consensual content. In 2025, American regulators concluded that Pornhub’s parent company had misled the public about safeguards and failed to prevent the re-uploading of illegal material.

And yet Pornhub remains accessible in Britain. No threats or bans from the government. Just quiet assurances about age verification and “compliance.”

The same is true of other AI platforms. Gemini, ChatGPT, and countless image-generation tools have all faced cases where non-consensual deepfakes were produced. None have been threatened with national expulsion. None have been treated as existential threats to public safety.

So, why X?

X is not primarily a sexual platform. It is a political one. It hosts journalists, dissidents, activists, and cultural critics. It is messy, chaotic, and often offensive — but it is also one of the last major spaces where unfiltered political disagreement still happens at scale.

That is why this fight has become transatlantic. The United States understands something the British government seems either unable or unwilling to admit: a wholesale ban on X would be a gross attempt to control and shut down public conversation, including views the government simply dislike.

If Starmer truly believes in protecting the vulnerable, his government should be relentlessly targeting the platforms that profit from sexual abuse and exploitation. Until that happens, the sudden ferocity directed at X will remain impossible to read as anything other than ideological.

And now, thanks to America’s spotlight, the world is watching.

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Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a writer and commentator from Great Britain.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.