Indonesia and Malaysia temporarily block Grok over sexualised AI images

Indonesia and Malaysia have temporarily blocked access to xAI’s chatbot Grok after a surge of sexualised, AI-generated images appeared on the tool, including depictions of real women and minors, according to TechCrunch.

The actions are the strongest steps taken so far by governments responding to content generated by Grok in response to user prompts on the social media platform X.

In a statement shared Saturday with The Guardian and other outlets, Indonesia’s Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid said the government views “the practice of 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 the platform officials to discuss the issue.

Malaysia announced a similar temporary ban on Sunday.

Government responses have varied across countries over the past week. India’s IT ministry ordered the platform to take steps to prevent Grok from generating obscene content. The European Commission directed the platform’s parent company to retain documents related to the AI chatbot, a move that could lead to a formal investigation.

In the United Kingdom, communications regulator Ofcom said it would carry out a swift assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Ofcom has his full support to take action.

In France, the Paris prosecutor’s office had told Politico that it would investigate the spread of sexually explicit deepfakes on X. 

In the United States, the Trump administration has not publicly commented on the issue. Elon Musk, the CEO of xAI, is a major donor to President Donald Trump and led the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency last year. Several Democratic senators have called on Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores.

xAI initially responded by posting an apology from the Grok account, acknowledging that a post had violated ethical standards and potentially U.S. laws related to child sexual abuse material. The platform later restricted Grok’s image-generation feature to paying subscribers on X.

That restriction did not appear to apply to the standalone Grok app, which continued to allow users to generate images.

Musk has criticised government scrutiny. Responding to a post questioning why the U.K. government was not taking action against other AI image tools, he wrote, “They want any excuse for censorship.”