Govt issues 72-hr ultimatum to Musk’s X as Grok churns out sexualised photos

CHATBOT GROK ACKNOWLEDGED CREATING SEXUALISED IMAGES OF MINORS, VIOLATING ITS OWN ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

- Sejal Sharma

The government on Friday sent a letter to X Corp., demanding immediate action to prevent its Grok AI chatbot from generating obscene and sexually explicit content, and giving the company 72 hours to submit a detailed compliance report.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) directed X to undertake a comprehensive technical review of Grok and remove all violating content, warning that failure to comply could result in the loss of legal protections under the Information Technology (IT) Act and potential criminal prosecution.

The MeitY notice cited multiple legal violations, including sections of the IT Act dealing with obscene content, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012.

"It has especially been observed that the service namely 'Grok AI' developed by you and integrated and made available on the X platform, is being misused by users to create fake accounts to host, generate, publish or share obscene images or videos of women in a derogatory or vulgar manner," the ministry said in a letter to X's chief compliance officer for India operations.

The action came after Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi demanded intervention, highlighting how men are using fake accounts to post women's photos on X and using Grok prompts to minimise their clothing and sexualise them.

In a letter to electronics and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Chaturvedi said the trend represented an "unacceptable and gross misuse of an AI function".