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X revenue plummeted by 60% in 2025 in the UK as spooked advertisers disassociated from the platform – specifically, over Grok’s willingness to create sexually explicit imagery on a mass scale.
For anyone who spends a significant amount of time on X, these developments will come as no surprise whatsoever.
Over the last couple of months, X has been completely saturated with sexually explicit content traceable to one common origin: @Grok
Despite the UK’s active stance against the creation of pornographic deepfakes and ‘nudify’ apps, Grok has been perpetually summoned to digitally alter images of people – the vast majority women – by undressing them and rendering them in sexually suggestive poses. All of this occurs on public timelines where anyone can see it.
During this time, condemnation of Grok and X has been widespread, with many of the critics themselves becoming victims of ludicrous digital doctoring the moment they publicly express their frustration. Musk, in his staunch belligerence, has remained silent on the situation, no doubt resorting to his usual catch-all placation of free speech.
Nonetheless, given the UK’s recent prioritisation of online safety and holding social media companies accountable for the content they spread, the nation’s advertisers have been quietly ousting X as an engagement avenue through fear it has finally crossed a line.
Given Musk’s volatile and changeable nature, the platform has been viewed as risky since the £44 billion rebrand that waved goodbye to the bluebird. It was only in 2023 that he told any advertiser who pulled money from X over his antisemitic tweets to ‘go fuck yourself’ onstage at an event in New York.
He later sued major companies including Unilever (unsuccessfully), accusing them of conspiring an unlawful ‘massive advertiser boycott’ against X. For good measure, he has since removed a third of X’s UK workforce citing a dip in the platform’s commercial viability.
In the last year alone, X has recorded a massive 58% slump in advertising revenue – down from the £69.1 million accrued in 2023, to just £28.9 million in 2025. Powerless to avoid the elephant in the room, or risk a complete purge of ad revenue, it has tentatively acknowledged its most recent blunder.
