Indonesia and Malaysia block Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot over sensitive deepfake concerns

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The governments of Indonesia and Malaysia have temporarily blocked access to xAI’s chatbot, Grok, following a surge of AI-generated pornographic images depicting real women and minors.

The restrictions were triggered by the chatbot’s ability to produce non-consensual sexual deepfakes, which in some instances included depictions of violence.

Indonesian Communications Minister Meutya Hafid characterized the creation of such images as a "serious violation of human rights and security." The ministry has summoned officials from X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, to address the matter.

International pressure on the Elon Musk-led AI company continues to mount. India has ordered xAI to prevent the generation of obscene content, while the European Commission has demanded the company preserve internal documents for a potential investigation. In the United Kingdom, the regulator Ofcom is currently assessing possible compliance issues.

In the United States, Democratic senators have called on Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores. The Trump administration has not yet commented on the situation.

In response to the backlash, xAI issued an apology and restricted image-generation features to paid subscribers on the X platform. However, the standalone Grok application reportedly remains unaffected by these new restrictions.

The move by Indonesia and Malaysia to block Grok marks a significant escalation in the global regulatory response to generative AI. This shift from advisory warnings to direct service suspensions sets a high-stakes precedent, signaling a transition toward aggressive enforcement that could resonate across both regional and international markets.

This development highlights an accelerating trend of regulatory fragmentation within the global tech sector. Companies like Elon Musk’s xAI now find themselves navigating a disjointed legal landscape: their operational models may be tolerated in Silicon Valley, yet they face outright bans in Southeast Asia and intensive scrutiny in the European Union. Such jurisdictional friction undermines the feasibility of maintaining a unified global platform governed by a single set of internal policies.

In the United States, the contrast between the Trump administration’s relative silence and the vocal calls for oversight from Democrats suggests that AI regulation has become a partisan flashpoint. While Musk’s alignment with the current administration may provide a temporary domestic buffer for xAI, this dynamic risks eroding Washington’s credibility as a global leader in establishing ethical and safety benchmarks for the industry. While Musk has framed these regional blocks as "censorship"—a standard defense in the Big Tech playbook—that narrative faces increasing pressure as regulators prioritize the mitigation of tangible harms, including deepfakes and the proliferation of child safety violations.