Indonesia and Malaysia Block Elon Musk’s AI Chatbot Grok Over Non-Consensual Sexual Content

Indonesia and Malaysia have temporarily blocked access to Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok after it was used to produce sexually explicit and non-consensual images, including content involving minors. Regulators said the company’s safeguards were insufficient to prevent harm, and the bot will remain blocked until effective protections are implemented.

Over the weekend, Indonesia and Malaysia became the first countries in the world to block access to Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok after the tool was used to produce sexually explicit and non-consensual images. Indonesian regulators temporarily suspended access to the chatbot on Saturday, with Malaysian authorities following suit on Sunday, citing concerns over the misuse of the AI platform to generate harmful content.
Grok, which is accessible through X, formerly known as Twitter, attracted global attention and criticism after it was used to create images depicting female users in sexually explicit positions and in bikinis, with some content involving minors. Governments in both countries described the generation of such non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, individual dignity, and citizen safety in the digital space. Indonesia’s Communication and Digital Affairs Minister, Meutya Hafid, highlighted the severity of the issue in a statement on Saturday, emphasizing the need to protect users from harm.
In Malaysia, the Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) explained that access to Grok was being blocked after repeated misuse of the AI bot to produce obscene, indecent, and sexually explicit images, including content involving women and minors. The MCMC confirmed that it had contacted Elon Musk’s X and xAI, the company behind Grok, demanding the implementation of effective safeguards to prevent such abuses. According to the MCMC, the responses received from the company were inadequate, relying solely on user-initiated reporting mechanisms rather than providing comprehensive measures to ensure compliance with the law. The regulator stressed that the chatbot would remain inaccessible until sufficient protections were introduced to prevent further harm.
Grok is one of several AI platforms competing globally with offerings from companies like Google and Microsoft. The rapid development of such AI tools has repeatedly raised questions about the lack of regulation, with authorities in many countries struggling to keep pace with the technology’s capabilities. In some cases, governments have even been explicitly directed to limit regulation, as occurred in the United States during the Trump administration.
Elon Musk, a close ally of former President Trump, launched Grok in 2023, offering free access to users on X. In the summer of 2025, the company introduced Grok Imagine, an image generation feature that included a so-called “spicy mode,” allowing the creation of adult content. Complaints over Grok’s image generation capabilities have come from countries including the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, and France. While the image generation feature was later restricted to paying X users, critics argue that this measure has not fully addressed the risks posed by the AI tool.