Indonesia has conditionally lifted its ban on xAI’s chatbot Grok, following similar actions by Malaysia and the Philippines. The Southeast Asian countries imposed the bans after Grok generated nonconsensual, sexualized imagery on X, including deepfakes of real women and minors.
Separate analyses by The New York Times and the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Grok produced at least 1.8 million such images of women between late December and January.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs announced the decision after receiving a letter from X “outlining concrete steps for service improvements and the prevention of misuse.” Alexander Sabar, the ministry’s director general of digital space monitoring, stated the ban was lifted only “conditionally” and could be reinstated if “further violations are discovered.”
Malaysia and the Philippines removed their bans on January 23.
In the United States, California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office launched an investigation into xAI and issued a cease-and-desist letter demanding immediate action to stop producing the images.
xAI has restricted Grok’s image-generation feature to paying subscribers on X. Elon Musk, xAI’s CEO, said, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” He added that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.”
