Indonesian and Malaysian officials have announced a temporary ban on xAI’s chatbot, Grok.
These actions represent the most decisive governmental responses to date concerning a proliferation of sexually explicit, AI-generated images—frequently portraying real women and minors, and sometimes depicting violence—which Grok has produced in response to user prompts on the X social network. (X and xAI are under the same corporate umbrella.)
In a declaration provided to the Guardian and other media outlets on Saturday, Indonesia’s communications and digital minister, Meutya Hafid, stated, “The government considers the creation of non-consensual sexual deepfakes a grave violation of human rights, dignity, and citizen security in the digital realm.”
The ministry has reportedly also summoned X executives for discussions regarding this matter.
According to The New York Times, the Malaysian government announced a similar prohibition on Sunday.
Other governmental reactions over the past week include a directive from India’s IT ministry instructing xAI to implement measures preventing Grok from generating objectionable content, and an order from the European Commission for the company to retain all documents related to Grok, potentially foreshadowing an investigation.
In the United Kingdom, Ofcom, the communications regulator, has indicated it will “conduct a rapid evaluation to ascertain if there are potential compliance issues that necessitate an inquiry.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer affirmed his “full support” for Ofcom to take action in an interview.
While the Trump administration in the United States has remained silent on the issue (xAI CEO Elon Musk is a significant Trump donor and headed the administration’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency last year), Democratic senators have urged Apple and Google to remove X from their respective app stores.
xAI initially responded by posting a seemingly first-person apology via the Grok account, admitting that a post “violated ethical standards and potentially US laws” pertaining to child sexual abuse material. Subsequently, it limited the AI image-generation capability to paying X subscribers, although this restriction did not appear to affect the standalone Grok app, which still allowed anyone to create images.
Responding to a post questioning the U.K. government’s inaction against other AI image generation tools, Musk commented, “They are looking for any excuse for censorship.”
This article has been revised to include Malaysia’s ban on Grok.