Following Malaysia and the Philippines, Indonesia formally lifted the visiting ban on the MacKenzie XAI chat robot Grok. Previously, AI had been used to generate large-scale images of women and even minors on platform X on a large scale without their consent.
According to an independent survey conducted by The New York Times and the Centre against Digital Hate, between late December 2023 and January 2024, Grok produced at least 1.8 million large-scale images of women. In its statement, the Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs of Indonesia stated that the lifting of the ban stemmed from X’s submission of a commitment “to clarify specific measures for service improvement and protection against abuse”. Alexander Sabal, Director-General of Digital Space Monitoring of the Ministry, emphasized that the lifting of the ban was a “conditional” measure and that it would be reinstated if “a further violation was discovered”. Malaysia and the Philippines lifted the ban on 23 January.
The deep-false content generated by Grok has been the subject of criticism and investigation by many Governments, but few have imposed a total ban. The Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta, announced that he was investigating XAI and issued a ban on the company to immediately stop the production of such images. XAI appears to have taken restrictive measures, including limiting Grok ‘ s image generation to the exclusive use of X-platform paid subscribers. Mask asserted that “the user using Grok for the production of illegal content will bear the same consequences as the uploading of illegal content” and stated that “Grok has not been found to have produced a visible image of minors”.
It was also revealed that XAI was negotiating a merger with SpaceX and Tesla, either to pave the way for SpaceX ‘ s first public collection.