By Lex Harvey, CNN
Grok is a tool on Musk's social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Photo: Nikolas Kokovlis / NurPhoto via AFP
Elon Musk's Grok has been blocked by Indonesia and Malaysia, the first countries to do so after the AI tool's "digital undressing" function flooded the internet with photos of women and minors in suggestive and obscene manipulated images.
International pressure has been mounting on Musk to rein in Grok on the heels of a viral trend where users have asked the AI tool to generate sexually explicit deepfakes.
Grok is a tool on Musk's social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Indonesia's digital minister Meutya Hafid said in a statement Saturday the ban was to "protect women, children and the broader public from the risks of fake pornographic content generated using artificial intelligence technology".
Malaysia announced its own temporary ban Sunday following "the repeated misuse of Grok to generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive, and non-consensual manipulated images, including content involving women and minors".
Indonesia and Malaysia are both Muslim-majority countries with strict anti-pornography laws.
CNN has reached out to parent company xAI for comment.
Officials in the United Kingdom, European Union and India have also expressed concerns about Grok's guardrails.
Previously Musk and xAI said they were tackling the issue by permanently suspending offending accounts and "working with local governments and law enforcement". But Grok's responses to user requests were still flooded with images sexualizing women.
Grok is seen by many users as an outlier compared to other mainstream AI models by allowing, and in some cases promoting, sexually explicit content and companion avatars.
The surge in the digital undressing trend began late last year when many users discovered they could tag Grok on X and make it manipulate images.
Users have prompted the chatbot to generate images of people in bikinis and posing suggestively, causing distress to hundreds of thousands of women worldwide.
Researchers at AI Forensics, a European non-profit that investigates algorithms, analysed over 20,000 random images generated by Grok and 50,000 user requests between 25 December and 1 January.
- CNN
