Indonesia and Malaysia ban Grok over non-consensual sexual deepfakes

Officials from Indonesia and Malaysia said they were temporarily blocking access to xAI’s Grok chatbot.

These are the most aggressive moves yet by government officials Responding to the flood of sexual images generated by artificial intelligence – They often depict real women and minors, and sometimes Depicts violence – Published by Grok in response to user requests on the social network X. (X and xAI are part of the same company.)

in A statement shared on Saturday with The Guardian In other posts, Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Mutya Hafid said: “The government considers the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes to be a serious violation of human rights, dignity and security of citizens in the digital space.”

The ministry reportedly summoned X officials to discuss the issue.

The New York Times said The Malaysian government announced a similar ban Sunday.

These include various government responses over the past week Order of the Ministry of Information Technology of India For xAI to take action to prevent Grok from creating obscene content, as well as an order from the European Commission for the company to retain all documents related to Grok, which could pave the way for an investigation.

In the United Kingdom, communications regulator Ofcom said it would “conduct a rapid assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues that warrant investigation.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in an interview that Ofcom had his “full support to take the necessary action.”

While in the US, the Trump administration appears to be keeping quiet on the issue (XAI CEO Elon Musk is a major donor to Trump and He led the administration’s controversial government efficiency drive Last year), Democratic senators did Called Apple and Google To remove X from their app stores.

xAI initially responded with Posting an apology that appears to be in the first person to Grok’s account, acknowledging that the post “violates ethical standards and possibly US laws” regarding child sexual abuse material. Later Limit AI image generation feature For paying subscribers on

In response to a post questioning why the UK government has not taken action against other AI-based image creation tools, Musk wrote“They want any excuse for censorship.”

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