Malaysia has suspended access to Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok after the artificial intelligence tool was found to have generated pornographic content, the country’s technology regulator said on Sunday, reports AFP.
The move follows global backlash after it emerged that Grok’s image-generation feature allowed users to sexualise images of women and children using simple text prompts.
Indonesia on Saturday became the first country to block the tool entirely, while access elsewhere has been restricted to paying subscribers.
In a statement, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said it had “directed a temporary restriction on access to the Grok artificial intelligence for users in Malaysia” with immediate effect.
An AFP reporter in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur confirmed that Grok was unresponsive on Sunday when prompts were entered.
“This action follows repeated misuse of Grok to generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive and non-consensual manipulated images,” the regulator said.
The MCMC cited content involving women and minors, noting that the violations occurred despite prior regulatory engagement and formal notices issued to X Corp. and xAI, the startup that developed Grok. The AI tool is integrated into the social media platform X.
The regulator said the platform’s safeguards were inadequate and that access would only be restored once required changes are implemented and verified.
According to the statement, X Corp. failed to address the inherent risks posed by the design and operation of the AI tool, relying largely on user-initiated reporting mechanisms.
European officials and technology campaigners on Friday also criticised Grok after its image-generation feature was limited to paying subscribers, arguing that the change failed to address concerns over sexualised deepfakes.
Grok appeared to respond to the criticism through a new monetisation policy, posting on X that image generation and editing were now limited to paying subscribers, alongside a link to its premium subscription service.
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
