Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe has been slammed for maintaining a close relationship with Elon Musk while holding shares in an online child safety business.
Far-right tech billionaire Musk, the richest person in the world, owns the social media site X (formerly known as Twitter), which has been used to produce sexually explicit images of women and children.
The platform’s artificial intelligence agent Grok previously allowed users to create explicit scenes using images of real people, including children – a practice now banned by X in jurisdictions where it is illegal. An estimated 3 million sexualised images were created using Grok in 11 days following the rollout of its image generation tool during December and January.
Musk claimed he had “literally zero” awareness of Grok generating explicit or naked underage images, while the AI tool itself apologised for producing this content – saying it was a “failure of safeguards” and that the company was attempting to prevent any future issues.
Lowe claims to be a fierce advocate for child safety, and has campaigned heavily on the “grooming gangs” scandal. His register of interests also shows that he holds more than £70,000 worth of shares in SafeToNet – a tech company which develops software to protect children from online harms, including “the filming, viewing, and sharing of explicit content”.
However, Lowe’s closeness to Musk draws his commitment to online child safety into question.
Musk, who has provided financial support to far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson, has used his huge social media following to call on Brits to join Restore – claiming that the party “must win to save Britain”. Lowe met Musk in July, stating on Joe Rogan’s podcast that the tech founder “has been an incredible support for us” – adding that, thanks to Musk’s ownership of X, he has “released free speech”.
Cary Mitchell, executive director of strategy at Best for Britain, which campaigns to strengthen UK democracy, said: “We have become sadly familiar with this kind of hypocritical abandonment of principles by those on the radical right.
“Restore Britain’s rise in popularity reminds us all of the very real threat posed by populists and their ‘rules for thee but not for me’ approach to politics, a threat that must be thwarted to protect our democracy and rights.”
Hayley Dodd, SafeToNet’s chief strategy and brand officer, told DeSmog: “We do not offer comment on the personal views, activities or associations of individual shareholders. Our shareholders do not speak for the company, and the company does not speak for them. We can say however that all shareholders support our mission to protect children online.”
Lowe, a former MP for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, this week offered to put “personal differences aside” and co-operate with his old party. Farage initially said he was “open minded” about striking a pact with Restore, though Lowe has accused the Reform leader of “outright lying” about their private conversations.
Online Safety Hypocrisy
Musk’s company xAI is suing the U.S. state of Minnesota for attempting to introduce a first-in-the-nation law banning “nudification” technology on websites and apps.
In the lawsuit, xAI said it does not contest the state’s interest in banning the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people without their consent, but that the law “extends far beyond that goal”, while subjecting companies to a penalty of $500,000 for each violation.
The UK’s media regulator Ofcom is also investigating X over a potential breach of the 2023 Online Safety Act following the use of Grok to create sexualised images of women and children, while Labour MP Jessica Asato is suing the firm over explicit images created of her using X’s AI tools.
Musk’s company has claimed that the UK’s Online Safety Act, which attempts to protect people from online harms, risks “seriously infringing” free speech. The law requires social media companies to remove harmful content or face major fines.
Lowe has echoed this language, saying the UK should “resist censorship” and “repeal” the act.
However, SafeToNet partners with the UK government and has praised it for putting pressure on tech firms to detect and block nude images served to children.
“The government is right to act. Children have been failed for too long,” SafeToNet chair Richard Pursey said in June.
“We can put an end to so much online misery with this approach … Let’s be blunt: manufacturers have built devices capable of facilitating illegal, explicit, image-based harm to children. That’s the reality,” he added.
This is not the first time that Lowe’s financial interests have contradicted his ideological beliefs. As DeSmog revealed, the Restore leader owns a firm specialising in heat pumps, a flagship clean heating technology, and is a shareholder in “one of the UK’s leading clean energy development companies”.
Meanwhile, Lowe is a climate science denier, having claimed that people pointing out climate change impacts are part of a “cult”. His party advocates for repealing the UK’s flagship 2008 Climate Change Act, and its energy policy paper claims that “carbon dioxide levels are at historic lows” and that it rejects “the sensationalist claims that it should be treated as a kind of poison”.
In reality, atmospheric carbon dioxide is now 50 percent higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution, while the annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases.
Restore Britain is a far-right party whose senior figures have supported ethno-nationalism, claiming that only those with “British ancestry and Christian faith” are authentically British. The party has advocated for the “remigration” of immigrants, including legally settled migrants, has said that we must “end mass immigration from Muslim countries”, and that “migrants have colonised large parts of our country”.
The anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate has found that “a litany of extremists have lined up behind Lowe”, including those who’ve previously been associated with fascist groups.
Restore, Lowe, Musk, and xAI were approached for comment.
