Indonesia and Malaysia block Grok over surge in non-consensual AI-generated sexual imagery

Indonesia and Malaysia have temporarily blocked access to xAI’s chatbot Grok following concerns over the spread of non-consensual, sexualised AI-generated imagery linked to the tool.

Officials in both countries have taken their strongest action so far in response to a surge of explicit images generated by Grok in response to user prompts on the social media platform X, which is owned by the same company as xAI. The imagery has frequently depicted real women and minors and, in some cases, included violent content.

Indonesia’s communications and digital minister Meutya Hafid stated in a statement shared with the Guardian and other publications on Saturday that the government considers the creation and distribution of non-consensual sexual deepfakes to be a serious violation of human rights, personal dignity and the security of citizens in the digital space. The ministry has also reportedly summoned officials from X to discuss the issue.

The New York Times reported that the Malaysian government announced a similar temporary block on Grok on Sunday.

The actions in Indonesia and Malaysia come amid a range of regulatory responses globally over the past week. In India, the IT ministry has ordered X to take steps to prevent Grok from generating obscene content. In Europe, the European Commission has directed the company to retain all documents related to Grok, a move that could lead to a formal investigation.

In the United Kingdom, communications regulator Ofcom stated that it would undertake a swift assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues that warrant investigation. Prime Minister Keir Starmer informed media outlets that Ofcom has his full support to take action if required.

In the United States, the Trump administration has so far remained silent on the matter, despite xAI chief executive Elon Musk being a major donor to Trump and having led the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency last year. Meanwhile, Democratic senators have called on Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores.

xAI initially responded by publishing an apology via the Grok account, acknowledging that one of the posts had violated ethical standards and potentially US laws relating to child sexual abuse material. The company later restricted Grok’s image-generation feature to paying subscribers on X, although the limitation did not appear to extend to the standalone Grok app, which continued to allow image generation by all users.