Is X down? Thousands of social media users report outage amid ongoing Grok AI controversy
One of the world’s most popular social media platforms seems to have crashed this afternoon, according to thousands of users.
X, formerly Twitter, appears to be experiencing a temporary outage. While you can enter the platform through the website or app, nothing will load on your homepage, feeds or profile.
The platform has suffered major disruptions before. A widespread outage in March 2025 triggered more than 1.6 million reports on DownDetector, while issues linked to Cloudflare in November caused problems across several major sites, including X, Spotify and ChatGPT.
As of 2pm today (January 13), more than 7,000 users had reported problems with X. Most complaints relate to difficulty loading the homepage, with users describing the issues as intermittent rather than a full shutdown.
The mobile app is also affected. It’s not yet clear whether the outage is limited to certain regions, but reports have been logged in both the UK and the US.
The disruption comes as the UK prepares to introduce new legislation that would make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images. The move follows growing concern over Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot and its potential misuse.
Speaking to Labour MPs on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer warned that X could lose its ability to self-regulate if it fails to address the issue. “If X cannot control Grok, we will,” he said.
The government is also expected to unveil laws that would make it illegal to supply online tools designed to create such images.
A spokesperson for X previously said: “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”