Officials from Indonesia and Malaysia have announced a temporary ban on xAI’s chatbot Grok, marking a significant governmental reaction to the surge of non-consensual deepfake content. This decision comes as a response to the proliferation of sexually explicit, AI-generated images—often featuring real individuals, including minors, and occasionally including violent themes—shared on the social media platform X, which is owned by the same parent company as xAI.
In a statement released over the weekend, Indonesia’s Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid emphasized, “The government considers non-consensual sexual deepfakes a grave infringement of human rights, dignity, and the safety of citizens in the digital realm.” The Indonesian government has also summoned officials from X to discuss the growing concern surrounding this issue.
Following Indonesia’s lead, the Malaysian government implemented a similar ban on Grok on Sunday. In the past week, the global response has varied; India’s IT ministry has urged xAI to mitigate Grok’s capability to generate inappropriate content, while the European Commission has required the company to retain related documents, possibly indicating the beginning of an investigation.
In the United Kingdom, the communications regulator Ofcom announced plans for a swift evaluation of the situation to identify any compliance issues that may require further investigation. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has publicly expressed his support for Ofcom’s actions.
In contrast, the U.S. government, particularly the Trump administration—where xAI CEO Elon Musk has influence as a significant donor—has remained largely silent. However, Democratic senators have urged Apple and Google to consider removing the X app from their platforms.
Initially, xAI responded to the outcry with an apology via the Grok account, admitting that certain posts “violated ethical standards and could infringe U.S. laws regarding child sexual abuse material.” The company subsequently limited the AI image-generation function to paid subscribers on X, though these restrictions did not extend to the Grok application.
In an online exchange criticizing the UK government’s inaction against other AI image generation tools, Musk stated, “They want any excuse for censorship.”
This article has been updated to include Malaysia’s recent ban on Grok.
