Indonesia and Malaysia have temporarily blocked access to xAI’s chatbot Grok after a surge of sexualised AI generated images, including depictions of real women and minors, were produced by the tool in response to user requests on the social network X.
Southeast Asia Moves To Restrict Grok
Indonesia’s communications and digital minister Meutya Hafid said in a statement shared with the Guardian and other outlets that the government views non consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space. The ministry has also summoned X officials to discuss the issue. The New York Times reported that Malaysia announced a similar ban on Sunday.
Grok and X are operated by the same parent company, xAI, which is controlled by Elon Musk.
Wider Government Actions
Governments in other regions have taken varied steps. India’s IT ministry ordered X to prevent Grok from generating obscene content. The European Commission instructed the company to preserve all documents related to Grok, a move that could lead to a formal investigation. In the United Kingdom, Ofcom said it would conduct a swift assessment to determine whether there are compliance issues that warrant investigation, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the regulator has his full support to take action.
In the United States, the Trump administration has not issued a public response. Democratic senators have called on Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores.
xAI And Musk Response
xAI initially posted an apology from the Grok account acknowledging that a post violated ethical standards and potentially US laws relating to child sexual abuse material. The company then restricted Grok’s image generation features on X to paying subscribers, though the standalone Grok app continued to allow users to create images.
Elon Musk responded to criticism by writing that authorities were seeking “any excuse for censorship” after a post questioned why the UK government was not acting against other AI image tools.
Featured image credits: Heute.at
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