Indonesia and Malaysia block Grok through non-consensual, sexual deepfakes

Officials from Indonesia and Malaysia say they are blocking access to Grok’s xAI chatbot.

This is the most aggressive move by government officials respond to the flood of AI-generated sexual imagery – often depicts real women and small children, and sometimes represents violence — sent by Grok in response to a request from a user on the social network X. (X and xAI are part of the same company.)

At joint statement was with the Guardian and other publications, Indonesia’s Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said, “The government considers the practice of non-consensual sexual falsification as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and security of citizens in the digital space.”

The ministry also reportedly invited X officials to discuss the issue.

The New York Times said The Malaysian government announced the same ban on Sunday.

Different government responses over the past week have included orders from the IT ministry of India for xAI to take action to prevent Grok from producing obscene content, as well as an order from the European Commission for the company to retain all documents related to Grok, potentially setting the stage for an investigation.

In the U.K., communications regulator Ofcom said it “will conduct a rapid assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues that warrant investigation.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in an interview Ofcom had “full support for action.”

And while in the United States, the Trump administration seems to be silent on the issue (xAI CEO Elon Musk is a major Trump donor and led the controversial administration of the Department of Government Efficiency last year), Democratic senators have called on Apple and Google to remove X from the app store.

xAI first responded by send an apology to the first person to Grok’s account, admitting that the post “violated ethical standards and potentially US law” regarding child sexual abuse material. It was later limited AI image generation features for paying customers on X, although the restriction does not affect the Grok app itself, which still allows anyone to generate images.

In response to a post wondering why the UK government hasn’t taken action against other AI image generation tools, Musk wrote“They want an excuse for censorship.”

This post has been updated to reflect Malaysia’s ban on Grok.