Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot owned by Elon Musk, is facing growing criticism around the world and the threat of government crackdowns for responding to user commands on the social media platform X to generate sexually explicit images including images of minors.
Relevant Malaysian authorities issued a statement on Saturday saying that the country is investigating related images generated by Grok after receiving complaints that some people have abused artificial intelligence technology to tamper with images of women and minors and produce indecent, highly offensive or other harmful content.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement on Saturday that the production or dissemination of such harmful content is illegal under Malaysian law. The media regulator said it would investigate users of social platform X accused of breaking the law and summon representatives of the company for questioning.
"Although Social Platform X is not currently a licensed service provider, it has a responsibility to prevent the spread of harmful content on its platform," the statement stated.
Musk responded in a post on social platform
"Anyone who uses Grok to generate illegal content will face the same consequences as uploading illegal content," he wrote in the post.
Malaysia is the latest country to express strong concerns about Grok. The Indian government sent a letter to social platform Bloomberg has reviewed a copy of the letter, dated January 2.
The Indian government requires Social Platform The Indian government also stated that it may consider introducing special regulations for objectionable content generated by artificial intelligence on social media platforms.
India's Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in an interview: "The relevant parliamentary committee has recommended the introduction of a strong law to regulate social media platforms. We are currently studying this proposal."
The French government also filed charges last Friday, claiming that Grok had generated "obviously illegal" sexual content on social platform X without the consent of the parties involved. The French government pointed out in a statement that the relevant images generated by Grok may have violated the EU's Digital Services Act. The statement mentioned that this regulation requires large platforms to take measures to reduce the risk of the spread of illegal content.
The chatbot generated objectionable images in apparent violation of its own acceptable use policy, which explicitly prohibits the generation of content involving the sexualization of children. At present, some illegal pictures have been removed from the shelves.
The reporter sought comment via email on this matter from xAI, the company that developed Grok and operates social platform
Over the past two weeks, more and more users on social platform X have asked Grok to generate images and sexualize and tamper with photos of women and children. The unhealthy trend quickly spread around the world after the platform launched its photo editing feature just before Christmas.
Grok posted a post on social platform