Indonesia and Malaysia said they were blocking access to Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot created by Elon Musk, this weekend amid mounting outrage over the bot producing sexualized images of real people.
Indonesia announced that it was temporarily blocking the chatbot from xAI, Mr. Musk’s A.I. company, on Saturday, and the Malaysian government made a similar announcement on Sunday. While officials elsewhere have expressed concern and called for bans over the images, Indonesia and Malaysia are the first countries to formally ban the application.
“The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity and the security of citizens in the digital space,” Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s minister of communications and digital affairs, said in a statement released on Saturday.
X Corp, an xAI subsidiary, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bans.
In recent weeks, sexually explicit images generated by Grok have flooded X, the social media platform owned by Mr. Musk where users can request the chatbot to produce images of real people, including putting them in sexually explicit situations, sometimes removing their clothes or positioning them in suggestive poses.
Indonesia’s government has long taken a strict stance against pornographic content online, restricting access to websites such as Pornhub and OnlyFans. In 2018, the authorities briefly blocked TikTok, citing the prevalence of content that officials said posed risks to children, including sexually explicit material.
In Malaysia, regulators have said they plan to bar children under 16 from social media, partly because of several online bullying episodes that have resulted in the high-profile deaths of minors.
Grok’s production of sexually explicit images has drawn outrage from officials across the world, including Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, and U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon; Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts; and Ben Ray Lújan, Democrat of New Mexico, who sent a letter last week asking Apple and Google to remove the application from their online stores.
While many A.I. chatbots have safeguards that restrict them from producing images of real people, Mr. Musk — known for pushing the limit on allowable speech — has so far refused to rein in his own platforms, where harassment and hate-filled language has thrived.
Grok’s creation of nonconsensual, sexually explicit imagery could potentially violate laws in multiple countries against possessing and sharing such content, particularly as some of the images have included children and minors. In a post on X this month, Mr. Musk said any users who directed Grok to produce sexually explicit images of children would suffer “consequences.”
Last week, the Grok feature on X restricted its image-generation abilities to subscribers, who pay a fee for access to extra features on the app. But regulators say the move does little to solve the central problem, and merely makes generating inappropriate images a premium service.
On Friday, Mr. Starmer’s spokesman said limiting image creation to X subscribers was “not a solution” and was “insulting” to victims of misogyny and sexual violence.
Hasya Nindita contributed reporting from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and Zunaira Saieed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
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