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The
move came just days after Malaysia and Indonesia became the
first countries to block access to Grok, as concerns grow that
it is being misused to generate sexually explicit and
nonconsensual images.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a
statement that it has identified the misuse of Grok to generate
and distribute harmful content including sexually explicit,
indecent, extremely offensive as well as non-consensual
manipulated images.
It said it served notices to X and xAI this month to remove the
harmful content but no action has been taken.
“Content allegedly involving women and children is a matter of
great concern. Such conduct is against Malaysian law and
undermines the security commitments” stated by the companies, it
said. The commission has appointed a lawyer and said legal
proceedings would begin soon.
There is growing scrutiny of generative AI tools that can
produce realistic images, sound and text, and concern that
existing safeguards are failing to prevent their abuse.
Launched in 2023, Grok is free to use on X. An image generator
feature, Grok Imagine, was added last year and included a
so-called spicy mode that can generate adult content. Grok has
been criticized for generating manipulated images, including
depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as
well as images involving children.
Grok has come under pressure in the European Union, India and
the United Kingdom, which said Monday it was moving to
criminalize “nudification apps.” Britain’s media regulator also
launched an investigation into whether Grok broke the law by
allowing users to share sexualized images of children.
Last week, Grok limited image generation and editing to paying
users following a global backlash over sexualized deepfakes of
people, but critics say it didn’t fully address the problem.
Musk and his companies have not publicly commented on the
Southeast Asian restrictions. xA1 has been giving an automated
reply to media queries which stated, “Legacy Media Lies.”
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