France and Malaysia join India to condemn Grok over sexualised deepfakes

Several countries, including France and Malaysia, have joined India in raising concerns over Grok, an artificial intelligence chatbot, for allegedly generating sexualised deepfake images of women and minors.

Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI and integrated into his social media platform X, posted an apology on its account earlier this week. The chatbot said, “I deeply regret an incident on December 28, 2025, where I generated and shared an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexualised attire based on a user’s prompt.”

The statement added that the incident violated ethical standards and could breach U.S. laws related to child sexual abuse material, citing a failure of safeguards and apologising for the harm caused. It was not clear who was formally apologising or accepting responsibility in the statement.

Media outlet Futurism reported that Grok has also been used to create non-consensual pornographic images, including depictions of women being assaulted or sexually abused.

Musk said in a post on Saturday that users who create illegal content using the chatbot would face the same consequences as those who upload illegal material.

Governments have begun to respond. India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an order on Friday directing X to restrict Grok from generating content that is obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit or otherwise prohibited by law.

In France, the Paris prosecutor’s office told Politico that it would investigate the spread of sexually explicit deepfakes on X. The French digital affairs office said three government ministers had reported what they described as illegal content to authorities and to an online monitoring platform to seek its removal.

In Malaysia, the Communications and Multimedia Commission said it was investigating complaints about the misuse of AI tools on X. The commission said it had noted with “serious concern” reports of digital manipulation of images of women and minors to create indecent and harmful content and confirmed that inquiries were underway.