The world’s fourth most populous country reportedly blocked Grok

On Saturday, Indonesia, the fourth most populous country on the planet, apparently issued a temporary block of the Grok chatbotMeutya Hafid, Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs, said in a statement: “The government considers the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes to be a serious violation of the human rights, dignity and security of citizens in the digital space. »

At the time of writing, it was unclear whether anything was actively blocked in Indonesia. Local X accounts in Indonesia were still able to communicate with the source of the deepfakes that made headlines: the Grok respond to users in Indonesianclaiming he was restricted and obeying the restrictions. Grok 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 blockage has a real effect, Indonesia is the first, and so far only, country to take action against Grok over deepfakes. According to a reportCountries and regions where government agencies have taken steps to publicly examine, warn or condemn Grok’s recent spate of non-consensual sexual images, including images of minors, include the EU, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, India, Malaysia and Australia.

About a day earlier, Elon Musk’s made a slight change to Grok following the global deepfakes backlash: While Grok previously generated images in response to X posts from anyone who tagged @grok, it now only offers this level of convenience to paying X users, although free users can still generate images on Grok’s website. Grok is the flagship product of Elon Musk’s xAI, which is technically the parent company of social media platform X.

Indonesia is sometimes called “the third largest democracy in the world”, especially by people closely associated with American diplomats, as it has generally close ties with the United States. The current administration is on good terms with President Trump. In addition to ranking fourth in terms of gross population, it ranks fourth in number of Internet users.

The Guardian Remarks that the Indonesian Ministry of Digital Affairs invited X to discuss the Grok ban.

When reached for comment, Grok’s parent company, xAI, responded, as it does to all emails, “Legacy Media Lies.”