On Saturday, Indonesia, the fourth most populous country on Earth, apparently issued a temporary block of the the Grok chatbot, with Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s minister of communication and digital affairs saying in a statement, “The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space.”
As of this writing, it was not readily apparent what if anything was actively blocked in Indonesia. Local X accounts in Indonesia were still able to communicate with the source of the headline-grabbing deepfakes: the Grok X account. The bot at that account was, however, replying to users in Indonesian, saying it was restricted, and that it was obeying the restrictions. Grok’s images were still available on X with my location set to Indonesia with a VPN, and when I tried to access Grok.com from Indonesia—again, via VPN—the page still loaded.
Assuming this block has some actual effect, Indonesia is the first, and so far only, country to take action against Grok over deepfakes. According to one report, countries and regions where government agencies have taken steps to publicly scrutinize, caution about, or condemn Grok’s recent spate of non-consensual sexual images—including images of underage people—includes the EU, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, India, Malaysia, and Australia.
About a day earlier, Elon Musk’s X provided a slight tweak to Grok following the global deepfake backlash: whereas Grok had formerly generated images in response to X posts from anyone who tagged @grok, it now only provides this level of convenience to paying X users, although free users can still generate images at the Grok website. Grok is the flagship product of Elon Musk’s xAI, which is technically the parent company of the X social media platform.
Indonesia is sometimes called “the world’s third-largest democracy,” particularly by people closely tied to U.S. diplomats, since it typically has close ties to the US. The current administration is on friendly terms with President Trump. In addition to ranking fourth in raw population, it also ranks fourth in number of internet users.
The Guardian notes that the Indonesian digital affairs ministry has invited X to discuss the Grok ban.
When reached for comment, Grok parent company xAI replied, as it does to all emails, “Legacy Media Lies.”
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