{"id":407500,"date":"2026-01-12T03:39:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T03:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/407500\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T03:39:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T03:39:04","slug":"malaysia-and-indonesia-block-x-chatbot-over-sexually-explicit-deepfakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/407500\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia and Indonesia block X chatbot over sexually explicit deepfakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked access to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok over its ability to produce sexually explicit deepfakes.<\/p>\n

Grok, a tool on Musk’s X platform, allows users to generate images. In recent weeks however, it has been used to edit images of real people<\/a> to show them in revealing outfits.<\/p>\n

The South East Asian countries said Grok could be used to produce pornographic and non-consensual images involving women and children. They are the first in the world to ban the AI tool.<\/p>\n

The BBC has contacted the Grok platform for comment. Musk had said earlier that critics of his platform are looking for “any excuse for censorship<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Grok, and its parent company X, also face pressure in Britain<\/a>, after Technology Secretary Liz Kendall backed calls to block access to the social media platform for failing to follow online safety laws.<\/p>\n

Malaysia and Indonesia’s communications ministries announced their move against Grok in separate statements over the weekend.<\/p>\n

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said on Sunday that it issued notices to X earlier in the year to seek tighter measures after it found “repeated misuse” of Grok to generate harmful content.<\/p>\n

But in its response, X failed to address the inherent risks of its platform’s design and focused mainly on the reporting process for users, the regulator said.<\/p>\n

It added that Grok will be blocked until effective safeguards are implemented and urged the public to report harmful online content.<\/p>\n

Using Grok to produce sexually explicit content is a violation of human rights, dignity and online safety, Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s communications and digital affairs minister, said in a post on Instagram.<\/p>\n

The ministry has also asked Musk’s X to provide a clarification on the use of Grok.<\/p>\n

Indonesian authorities have cracked down on other online sources of pornographic material in recent years, with platforms such as OnlyFans and Pornhub already banned in the country.<\/p>\n

British media regulator Ofcom is expected to soon decide on what to do about Grok.<\/p>\n

The use of Grok to generate sexualised images has been condemned by leaders worldwide, including UK Prime Ministry Keir Starmer, who called it “disgraceful” and “disgusting”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked access to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok over its ability to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-407500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}