By Lex Harvey, NCS
(NCS) — Elon Musk’s Grok has been blocked by Indonesia and Malaysia, the first international locations to take action after the bogus intelligence device’s “digital undressing” operate flooded the web with images of girls and minors in suggestive and obscene manipulated images.
International stress has been mounting on Musk to rein in Grok on the heels of a viral pattern the place customers have requested the AI device to generate sexually express deepfakes.
Grok is a device on Musk’s social media platform X, previously often known as Twitter.
Indonesia’s digital minister Meutya Hafid said in a statement Saturday the ban was to “protect women, children and the broader public from the risks of fake pornographic content generated using artificial intelligence technology.”
Malaysia announced its own temporary ban Sunday following “the repeated misuse of Grok to generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive, and non-consensual manipulated images, including content involving women and minors.”
Indonesia and Malaysia are each Muslim-majority international locations with strict anti-pornography legal guidelines.
NCS has reached out to dad or mum firm xAI for remark.
Officials in the United Kingdom, European Union and India have additionally expressed issues about Grok’s guardrails.
Previously Musk and xAI mentioned they have been tackling the difficulty by completely suspending offending accounts and “working with local governments and law enforcement.” But Grok’s responses to person requests have been nonetheless flooded with images sexualizing ladies
Grok is seen by many customers as an outlier in comparison with different mainstream AI fashions by permitting, and in some circumstances selling, sexually express content material and companion avatars.
The surge in the digital undressing pattern started late final yr when many customers found they might tag Grok on X and make it manipulate images.
Users have prompted the chatbot to generate images of individuals in bikinis and posing suggestively, inflicting misery to tons of of 1000’s of girls worldwide.
Researchers at AI Forensics, a European non-profit that investigates algorithms, analyzed over 20,000 random images generated by Grok and 50,000 person requests between December 25 and January 1.
The researchers discovered “a high prevalence of terms including ‘her’ ‘put’/’remove,’ ‘bikini,’ and ‘clothing.’”
More than half of the images generated of individuals “contained individuals in minimal attire such as underwear or bikinis.”
Musk pushes again towards censorship
Publicly, Musk has lengthy advocated towards “woke” AI fashions and what he calls censorship.
But the billionaire has pushed again towards guardrails for Grok inside the agency, one supply with information of the scenario at xAI instructed NCS.
The xAI security group, already small in comparison with its rivals, misplaced a number of staffers in the weeks main as much as the controversy.
Musk has mentioned anybody who makes use of Grok to make unlawful content material will face penalties. But he has largely dismissed issues about sexual content material on the app, arguing governments “just want to suppress free speech” and responding to criticism with emojis.
Last week, Grok limited some of its image generation features to paid X subscribers, however the restrictions solely apply to one of many methods customers work together with Grok.
Non-subscribers can nonetheless request Grok to edit images on the app, and picture and video technology features are nonetheless provided without cost via its standalone web site and app.
On Monday, the UK’s communications providers regulator opened a proper investigation into X to find out whether or not it has complied with its duties to guard individuals in Britain from unlawful content material.
Undressed images of individuals might quantity to intimate picture abuse or pornography, whereas sexualized images of kids might signify youngster sexual abuse materials, Ofcom mentioned in a statement.
If the regulator finds that X has damaged the regulation, it may well levy a high quality of as much as £18 million ($24 million) or 10% of the corporate’s qualifying worldwide income, whichever is bigger.
The-NCS-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
NCS’s Hadas Gold, Trista Kurniawan and Olesya Dmitracova contributed reporting.