Major charities including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) have stopped posting on social media platform X due to controversy surrounding its artificial intelligence tool’s image-creating function.
X’s AI tool Grok has been used to digitally manipulate images of people, often women and children, to depict them in a sexualised manner, removing clothing or depicting them in bikinis, it has been widely reported this month.
RSPB announced on Monday that it was leaving Elon Musk’s social media platform and branded the images created by its AI tool Grok a safeguarding risk.
In a statement on X, RSPB said: “With reports that X’s AI tool, Grok, has been used to create non-consensual and inappropriate images of people, we’ve decided to make our organisational accounts private and remove our historical content.
“Leaving it public would pose a potential safeguarding risk to our staff, volunteers and supporters.”
RSPB added that it would keep its X account in place in case it needs to be used in the future, but does not plan to post there for the “foreseeable”.
Domestic abuse charities Women’s Aid and Refuge have also left X this month, with the latter saying its decision “reflects our ongoing commitment to prioritising the safety and well-being of survivors”.
Other charities and not-for-profit organisations that have left X this month include Sport England, British Association of Social Workers and the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Southall Black Sisters, H&F Giving, Global Legal Action Network, Melanoma Focus UK, NCHC Charitable Fund, the Jordan Legacy, the Rivers Trust and York Travellers have also left the platform.
Long-term change ‘difficult’ to see, expert says
Madeleine Sugden, digital impact consultant, said that it was difficult to see long-term change despite the January departures.
“When there are still politicians, media outlets and journalists – the people to be influenced – are still on it, that’s a good reason for everybody to stay and just carry on with their blinkers on,” she said.
Sugden added that it would take a charity with the profile of Macmillan or British Red Cross to leave X to trigger wider sector change.
“Now people are leaving for something that is visible and something the platform has enabled people to do – that’s a different reason to leave – in some ways a bigger reason, rather than the ethics or the politics of the people involved in it,” she said.
Mental health charity Mind left last January but faced a backlash for doing so, said Sugden.
She predicted that those leaving would likely not return but said it remained to be seen whether a significant number of charities would depart.
Social media site BlueSky saw a spike in November 2024 during the US presidential election, but people returned to X in the following months.
A further increase has been recorded following the Grok controversy, but “nothing so dramatic” yet, Sugden added.
Quiet departures
Charities such as the Royal National Lifeboat Association (RNLI) have left X quietly, its last post on 5 August 2025, more than six months ago.
Other accounts, such as RSPB Minsmere, have “stopped posting” to X, with its bio reading: “Due to potential safeguarding risks posed to staff, volunteers and supporters by AI-altered images, we have stopped posting here.”
Sugden said that this week “does feel like another moment” and there had been a shift.
She said that Grok generating child sexual abuse images was a clear red line, one that should be a bigger catalyst for charities to leave.
“Carrying on using a platform with some bad press, questionable ethics and user experience is different to using one which has an integrated tool within the platform which is being allowed to generate degrading material including child sexual abuse images.
“In theory this development should be a bigger catalyst for organisations to leave.
“It’s hard to imagine what could be more extreme than this – we wouldn’t necessarily have put this on our risk register that somebody could do that [digitally remove clothing] because it sounds so ridiculous.”
She referenced Nell Fisher, a 14-year-old actress from Netflix’s Stranger Things, who was victim of X users commanding Grok to remove clothing from images of her, according to Axios.
Sugden added: “It’s difficult to imagine that’s not a red line and those conversations are not happening at children’s charities and beyond to leave X and if they’re not happening – why not?”
