Malaysia and Indonesia take steps to ban Musk’s Grok AI due to sexually explicit deepfakes
Two Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, have become the first in the world to take action against Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot and its capacity to generate deepfake images.
On January 10, Indonesia declared that it would temporarily restrict access to Grok. Meutya Hafid, the country’s Communication and Digital minister, stated that the ban was imposed to safeguard “women, children, and the broader community” from AI – created fake pornographic content.
Then, on the following day, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced that it would also “temporarily restrict” access to Grok due to “repeated misuse… to generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, extremely offensive, and non – consensual manipulated images.”
In a statement, [missing subject], yet considered their responses “insufficient to prevent harm or ensure legal compliance.”
Both Indonesia and Malaysia have strict regulations against online pornography. Indonesia, which is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has been especially assertive and has charged both Indonesian and foreign OnlyFans creators under its 2008 Pornography Act.
On January 9, [missing subject] limited image generation to paying users in an attempt to control the flood of deepfaked images, where users would ask Grok to modify images of women to show them in revealing clothing. Victims have criticized X for allowing the non – consensual creation of sexualized content, including that of minors. Government officials are also considering taking action against X and Grok.
xAI sent an email with only the text “Legacy Media Lies” after contacted them for a comment on Indonesia and Malaysia’s ban.
Persistent safety lapses
Given how easily deepfaked content could be generated, government actions against X and Grok were probably inevitable.
“Grok’s safeguards are easy to circumvent,” says Chew Han Ei, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore (NUS). “When a system can be so easily prompted to produce or amplify harmful synthetic content, it indicates a design flaw.”
Indonesia and Malaysia’s actions against Grok and X come amidst broader concerns in the region regarding social media and deepfakes.
Several Asian governments have passed regulations against the production of deepfakes, typically in the context of preventing cybercrime, fraud, and election interference. In 2024, South Korea made watching or producing deepfake pornography a criminal offense.
Last year, both Australia and Malaysia prohibited under – 16s from accessing social media, citing concerns about online dangers such as cyberbullying, sexual exploitation, and financial scams. On Monday, Meta revealed that it had closed 550,000 accounts across Facebook, [missing platform] and Threads to comply with Australia’s new ban.
“Governments are becoming less willing to tolerate a ‘release – first, fix – later’ approach. If safeguards are not reliable, access to the tool becomes a valid policy issue,” Chew says.