Grok under fire: Indonesia temporarily blocks xAI chatbot amid deepfake concerns | Technology News
2 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jan 11, 2026 09:41 AM IST
A few days after countries around the world, including India, Germany, France, Malaysia and others started cracking down on Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot for generating sexualised, non-consensual images of women and underage girls, Indonesia announced it is temporarily blocking the Elon Musk-backed AI chatbot
According to Reuters, the move comes after governments and regulators from all over the world started to ask xAI, the startup that developed Grok, about the AI chatbot’s image generation feature, making non-consensual sexualised deepfakes.
In a statement to the publication, Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid said that the “government views the practice of non-consensual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space.”
While several countries, including India, have already opened inquiries into Grok, Indonesia is the first country to outright ban Grok. According to the BBC, the United Kingdom is considering banning access to Elon Musk’s social media platform X over failing to comply with the country’s online safety laws.
Elon Musk had previously said that the social media platform will take action on users who prompt Grok AI to generate such images and videos and ban their accounts. However, the Indian government says that it is “not satisfied by the company’s response and are considering our next course of actions.”
On January 8, Elon Musk announced that it would be restricting Grok’s image generation and editing features to paid subscribers as it tries to fix safeguard lapses, allowing the generation of sexualised images.
X has already offered to provide the Indian government with a detailed demonstration of how Grok functions and explain its content moderation mechanism.
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