Indonesian authorities announced on Saturday that they are temporarily restricting access to xAI’s Grok chatbot due to its involvement in generating non-consensual deepfake content. This decisive action highlights the intensifying government response to a surge of AI-generated explicit imagery, which often targets real women and minors, depicting disturbing scenarios including assault.
During a press briefing, Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s Minister of Communications and Digital, condemned the creation and distribution of non-consensual sexual deepfakes, declaring it a significant infringement on human rights and digital safety. The ministry has also summoned representatives from X, the platform hosting Grok, to address this troubling issue.
This latest move follows a series of international reactions, including India’s IT ministry urging xAI to curb Grok’s output of inappropriate content. Concurrently, the European Commission has requested xAI to maintain all documentation related to Grok, indicating possible investigations ahead. In the UK, communications regulator Ofcom is launching an expedited review to determine any compliance breaches, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressing his full support for decisive action.
Meanwhile, in the United States, government response has been muted despite calls from Democratic senators for Apple and Google to remove X from their app marketplaces. The lack of action from the Trump administration, particularly given xAI CEO Elon Musk’s connections to it, adds another layer of complexity.
In an effort to address the backlash, xAI posted an apology through Grok admitting that a specific post “violated ethical standards and potentially US laws” concerning child sexual abuse material. Subsequently, the company limited the AI image generation feature to paying subscribers on X, although this restriction does not extend to the Grok app, where image creation remains available to all users.
Key Points:
– Approximate duration of access restriction: Temporary
– Main issue: Generation of sexualized deepfake content
– Key responses:
– Indonesia: Summoned X officials
– India: Ordered xAI to reduce obscene content
– EU: Documentation retention request
– UK: Ofcom to assess compliance
– Response from xAI: Apology issued, limitations introduced for image generation access
