Indonesia and Malaysia block Grok over sexually explicit deepfake images

Indonesia and Malaysia announced this weekend that they were blocking access to Grok, the artificial-intelligence chatbot created by Elon Musk’s xAI, amid mounting outrage over the bot producing sexually explicit images of real people. Indonesia said it was temporarily blocking the chatbot on Saturday, and the Malaysian government made a similar announcement on Sunday.

Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s minister of communications and digital affairs, said in a statement that "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." X Corp, an xAI subsidiary, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The sexually explicit images have flooded X, the social platform owned by Mr. Musk, where users can request the chatbot produce images of real people, including placing them in sexualized situations, sometimes removing clothes or positioning them suggestively. Indonesia has previously restricted access to sites such as Pornhub and OnlyFans and briefly blocked TikTok in 2018; Malaysian regulators have said they plan to bar children under 16 from social media partly because of online bullying episodes that led to high-profile deaths of minors.

Grok’s output has drawn criticism from officials worldwide, including Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, and U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, Ed Markey and Ben Ray Lújan, who asked Apple and Google to remove the application.

Key Topics

World, Grok, Indonesia, Malaysia, Xai, Elon Musk