Malaysia has become the second country to temporarily block access to Elon Musk’s Grok following a global outcry over the AI tool and its ability to create fake, sexually explicit images.
Malaysia said it would restrict access to Grok until effective security measures were implemented, a day after Indonesia took similar action.
Several governments and regulators have cracked down on Grok’s image tool, which is embedded in the X social media site and has sparked outrage because it allows users to manipulate images of women and children to remove their clothes and place them in sexual positions.
Grok, the Musk-led company developing XAI, said last week that the ability to create and edit images would be “limited to paying customers” on XAI. Such users have provided personal details to the company and can be identified if the function is misused.
However, the move has not quelled anger about Grok. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said on Sunday it would restrict access to Grok over the AI tool’s ability to “generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive and non-consensual manipulated images, including content involving women and minors”.
Grok also operates through a separate website and app. It was unclear whether the Malaysian and Indonesian restrictions applied to Grok on X, the Grok site and app, or both. The Guardian received reports from Indonesia that people were still able to use Grok through the app and X, although one reported that the app was very slow.
MCMC said it had issued notices to X and XAI this month demanding implementation of effective technical and moderation safeguards. However, the responses it received mostly relied on user-initiated reporting mechanisms and failed to address the underlying risks posed by Grok, MCMC said, which it considered inadequate to prevent losses or ensure legal compliance.
On Saturday, Indonesia also temporarily blocked the chatbot, with the country’s communications and digital minister, Meutya Hafid, saying the government “views the practice of sexual deepfakes without consent as a serious violation of the human rights, dignity and security of citizens in the digital sphere”.
Britain has also raised the possibility of sanctions if action is not taken, while on Saturday Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the use of generic AI to exploit or sexually exploit people without their consent as “disgusting”.
Across Europe, regulators and politicians have also issued warnings in recent weeks.
Wolfram Weimer, Germany’s culture and media minister, called on the European Commission to take legal action, warning of the “industrialization of sexual harassment”.
Italy’s data protection authority said the use of AI tools to create explicit images of people without consent could constitute a serious privacy breach and, in some cases, a criminal offence.
In France, government ministers said this month they had referred sexually explicit grok-generated material broadcast on X to prosecutors and alerted French media regulator Arcom.
India’s Ministry of IT and Electronics sent a formal notice to X on January 2 regarding the explicit images allegedly created through Grok, demanding removal of the content and a report on actions taken within 72 hours.
