Two Southeast Asian nations—Malaysia and Indonesia—have become the world’s first countries to take action against Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot and its ability to generate deepfake images.
On Jan. 10, Indonesia announced it would temporarily restrict access to Grok. Meutya Hafid, the nation’s Communication and Digital minister, wrote in a statement that the ban was imposed to protect “women, children and the larger community” from fake pornographic content created by AI.
Then, the next day, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said it would also “temporarily restrict” access to Grok following “repeated misuse … to generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive, and non-consensual manipulated images.”
In a statement, MCMC said it had issued notices to both X and xAI—Grok’s corporate parents—on Jan. 3 and Jan. 8 respectively, yet deemed their responses “insufficient to prevent harm or ensure legal compliance.”
Both Indonesia and Malaysia have strict rules against online pornography. Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has been particularly aggressive, and has charged both Indonesian and foreign OnlyFans creators under its 2008 Pornography Act.
