Investigations into Grok Mount as Malaysia and Indonesia Become First Countries to Block the Chatbot
Malaysia and Indonesia are the first countries to block access to xAI’s Grok after the chatbot started answering user prompts to create sexually explicit images of women and children without their consent.
The spread of the sexualized deepfakes, some of them including minors, has prompted condemnation and calls to action from officials in numerous countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Australia.
Regulators in Malaysia and Indonesia said that existing controls weren't preventing the creation and spread of fake pornographic content, particularly involving women and minors. Indonesia's government temporarily blocked access to Grok on Saturday, followed by Malaysia on Sunday.
CBC reports that initial findings showed that Grok lacks effective safeguards to stop users from creating and distributing pornographic content based on real photos of Indonesian residents, Alexander Sabar, director-general of digital space supervision, said in a separate statement.
In the U.K., the country’s media regulator said that it launched a formal investigation into whether Grok "complied with its duties to protect people in the U.K. from content that is illegal."
The regulator, Ofcom, said that Grok-generated images of children being sexualized or people being undressed may amount to pornography or child sexual abuse material.
"The content created and shared using Grok in recent days has been deeply disturbing," technology secretary Liz Kendall said.
Last week, Grok limited image generation and editing to paying users following a global backlash over sexualized deepfakes of people, but critics say it didn't fully address the problem.
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Grok, X's (formally known as Twitter) embedded AI chatbot, is being condemned around the world for generating graphically sexualized images of real people, including minors and non-consenting third parties, in response to any user's request.
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