Musk’s Grok blocked by Indonesia, Malaysia over s3xualized images in world first

  Elon Musks artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has been blocked by Indonesia and Malaysia, becoming the first countries to take such action after the tools so-called digital undressing function flooded the internet with manipulated, sexualized images of women and minors. International pressure has been mounting on Musk to rein in Grok following a viral trend in which users prompted the AI to generate sexually explicit deepfake images. Grok operates on Musks social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Indonesias digital minister, Meutya Hafid, said the ban was imposed to protect women, children and the wider public from the risks of fake pornographic content generated through artificial intelligence. Malaysia announced a temporary ban soon after, citing repeated misuse of Grok to create obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive and non-consensual manipulated images, including content involving women and minors. Both Indonesia and Malaysia are Muslim-majority countries with strict anti-pornography laws. Officials in the United Kingdom, the European Union and India have also raised concerns about Groks safety guardrails. Asked to comment on the bans, Groks parent company, xAI, dismissed the criticism, describing it as misinformation. Previously, Musk and xAI said they were addressing the issue by permanently suspending offending accounts and cooperating with local governments and law enforcement. However, Grok continued to generate images that sexualized women in response to user requests. Grok is widely viewed as an outlier among mainstream AI models, allowing and, in some cases, promoting sexually explicit content and companion avatars. The surge in the digital undressing trend began late last year, when users discovered they could tag Grok on X and request image manipulation. Users prompted the chatbot to generate images of people in bikinis or suggestive poses, causing distress to hundreds of thousands of women worldwide. Researchers at AI Forensics, a European non-profit organization that investigates algorithms, analyzed more than 20,000 randomly generated images and 50,000 user prompts over a one-week period.  They found a high prevalence of terms related to removing clothing, with more than half of the images depicting individuals in minimal attire such as underwear or bikinis. Musk has long positioned himself as a critic of what he calls woke AI models and censorship. However, sources familiar with xAI say he resisted stronger guardrails for Grok within the company. The firms safety team, already smaller than those of its competitors, reportedly lost several staff members in the weeks leading up to the controversy. While Musk has said anyone who uses Grok to generate illegal content will face consequences, he has largely dismissed concerns, arguing that governments are attempting to suppress free speech. Last week, Grok restricted some image-generation features to paid X subscribers, but other image and video generation tools remain freely available through its standalone website and app. Meanwhile, the UKs communications regulator has opened a formal investigation into X to determine whether it has met its legal obligations to protect users from illegal content. Regulators warned that manipulated sexual images could amount to intimate image abuse or pornography, while sexualized images of children may constitute child sexual abuse material. If violations are found, X could face substantial financial penalties.The post Musks Grok blocked by Indonesia, Malaysia over s3xualized images in world first appeared first on Linda Ikeji Blog.