Indonesia blocks Grok over non-consensual, sexualized deepfakes

Indonesian authorities said on Saturday that they have temporarily blocked access to xAI's chatbot Grok, marking one of the strongest government responses so far to the spread of sexualized, AI-generated images. Many of these images, which Grok generated in response to user prompts on the social media platform X, reportedly depict real women and minors and, in some cases, include scenes of assault and abuse. X and xAI are owned by the same company.

In a statement shared with the Guardian and other outlets, Indonesia's communications and digital minister Meutya Hafid said the government considers non-consensual sexual deepfakes to be a serious breach of human rights, personal dignity, and public safety in the digital environment. The ministry has also reportedly summoned X's representatives to address the issue.

Governments around the world have taken varying steps in response over the past week. In India, the IT ministry ordered xAI to implement measures to prevent Grok from producing obscene content. The European Commission has instructed the company to preserve all documents related to Grok, a move that could precede a formal investigation.

In the United Kingdom, communications regulator Ofcom said it will conduct a rapid assessment to determine whether compliance concerns justify an investigation. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in an interview that Ofcom has his full backing to take action if necessary.

By contrast, in the United States, the Trump administration has so far remained silent on the matter. xAI chief executive Elon Musk is a major donor to former President Donald Trump and previously led the administration's controversial Department of Government Efficiency. Meanwhile, Democratic senators have urged Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores.

xAI initially responded by posting what appeared to be a first-person apology on the Grok account, acknowledging that one post had violated ethical standards and may have breached U.S. laws related to child sexual abuse material. The company later limited Grok's image-generation feature to paying X subscribers. However, that restriction did not appear to apply to the standalone Grok app, which continued to allow any user to generate images.

Responding to criticism about why the U.K. government was not targeting other AI image-generation tools, Musk wrote, "They want any excuse for censorship."