Malaysia has suspended access to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, over concerns about AI-generated pornographic content, the country’s technology regulator said on Sunday, AFP reports.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said in a statement that it had “directed a temporary restriction on access to the Grok artificial intelligence for users in Malaysia,” with immediate effect.
“This action follows repeated misuse of Grok to generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive and non-consensual manipulated images,” the regulator said.
According to the statement, the decision followed the introduction of Grok’s image-creation feature, which allowed users to sexualise images of women and children using simple text prompts, triggering global backlash.
The commission cited “content involving women and minors, despite prior regulatory engagement and formal notices” issued to Musk’s X Corp. and xAI, the startup that developed Grok.
It said the platform’s safeguards were inadequate, stressing that access would only be restored after the required changes had been verified.
X Corp. had “failed to address the inherent risks posed by the design and operation of the AI tool,” the regulator said, adding that the company relied “primarily on user-initiated reporting mechanisms.”
An AFP reporter in Kuala Lumpur confirmed that when prompts were entered into Grok on Sunday, there was no response.
On Saturday, Indonesia became the first country to deny all access to the chatbot, while the tool has been restricted to paying subscribers in other countries.
Meanwhile, European officials and technology campaigners on Friday criticised Grok after its controversial image-creation feature was limited to paying subscribers, arguing that the move failed to address concerns about sexualised deepfakes.
Grok appeared to respond to the criticism through a new monetisation policy, posting on X on Thursday that image generation and editing were now “limited to paying subscribers,” alongside a link to a premium subscription.
