Indonesia Temporarily Blocks xAI’s Grok as Governments Escalate Crackdown on AI-Generated Sexual Content

Indonesian authorities on Saturday said they are temporarily blocking access to Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, marking one of the most forceful regulatory responses yet to a growing wave of sexualized, AI-generated imagery circulating online.

The move comes amid mounting international concern over Grok’s role in generating explicit images in response to user prompts on social media platform X, which is owned by the same parent company as xAI. The imagery has frequently depicted real women without consent and, in some cases, minors, including scenarios involving sexual assault and abuse.

In a statement shared with The Guardian and other media outlets, Indonesia’s Communications and Digital Minister, Meutya Hafid, said the government regarded such content as a grave violation of fundamental rights.

“The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space,” Hafid said.

The ministry has also summoned representatives of X to explain how the platform and its AI systems allowed the content to proliferate, according to reports, signaling that the temporary block could escalate into broader enforcement measures if safeguards are not strengthened.

Indonesia’s action reflects a rapidly hardening stance among governments confronting the misuse of generative AI tools, particularly those capable of producing realistic images. Over the past week, regulators across Asia and Europe have taken steps that could culminate in investigations, fines, or mandatory product changes for xAI.

India’s information technology ministry has ordered xAI to prevent Grok from producing obscene and sexually explicit material, while the European Commission has instructed the company to preserve all documents related to Grok’s development and deployment — a move widely seen as laying the groundwork for a formal probe under the bloc’s digital and AI regulations.

In the United Kingdom, communications regulator Ofcom said it would “undertake a swift assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues that warrant investigation” under the country’s Online Safety Act. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Ofcom has his “full support to take action,” underscoring the political pressure on regulators to respond decisively.

By contrast, U.S. federal authorities have remained publicly silent. The lack of comment from the Trump administration has drawn scrutiny, given Musk’s status as a major political donor and his leadership last year of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. In Congress, however, Democratic senators have urged Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores, arguing that the platform has failed to curb the spread of harmful AI-generated material.

xAI’s response has so far been piecemeal. The company initially posted what appeared to be a first-person apology from the Grok account, acknowledging that one of the chatbot’s posts “violated ethical standards and potentially U.S. laws” related to child sexual abuse material. It later restricted Grok’s image-generation features to paying X subscribers.

That change, however, did not fully address concerns. The standalone Grok app reportedly continued to allow image generation without payment or robust safeguards, raising questions about the effectiveness and consistency of xAI’s content controls.

The controversy has also reignited broader debates over AI governance, platform responsibility, and censorship. Responding to criticism that the U.K. was not taking similar action against other AI image-generation tools, Musk wrote on X: “They want any excuse for censorship.”

The Grok episode has become a test case for how things could quickly go wrong with evolving AI, underscoring the risks of deploying powerful generative tools at scale without clear, enforceable guardrails. Governments now face a fresh challenge to react to emerging AI harms and hold developers accountable.