Indonesia Blocks Elon Musk's Grok AI for Non-Consensual Explicit Deepfakes

Indonesian authorities announced on Saturday that they are temporarily restricting access to xAI's chatbot, Grok.

This marks one of the strongest measures taken by a government in response to a surge of sexualized, AI-generated images—many depicting real women and minors, and some portraying assault and abuse—that Grok has produced based on user requests on the social platform X. (X and xAI are affiliated companies.)

In a statement provided to the Guardian and other outlets, Indonesia’s Communications and Digital Minister, Meutya Hafid, stated, “The government regards the creation of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a severe infringement of human rights, personal dignity, and citizen safety in the digital realm.”

The ministry has also reportedly called in X representatives to address the matter.

Recent government actions include India’s IT ministry directing xAI to prevent Grok from producing explicit content, and the European Commission instructing the company to preserve all Grok-related documents, potentially laying groundwork for an inquiry.

In the United Kingdom, communications regulator Ofcom stated it will “conduct a rapid review to identify any compliance concerns that may require investigation.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer affirmed in an interview that Ofcom has his “full backing to take necessary steps.”

While the Trump administration in the United States has remained quiet on the issue—xAI CEO Elon Musk is a major donor to Trump and previously headed the administration's contentious Department of Government Efficiency—Democratic senators have urged Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores.

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xAI initially responded by issuing an apology from the Grok account, admitting that a post “breached ethical guidelines and possibly U.S. laws” concerning child sexual abuse material. It later limited the AI image-generation function to X’s paying subscribers, though this change did not seem to apply to the Grok app, which continued to allow general users to create images.

When questioned about the UK government's inaction toward other AI image tools, Musk replied, “They are seeking any pretext for censorship.”