• Indonesia has temporarily blocked Elon Musk's Grok chatbot due to concerns over AI-generated explicit content.
• The ban marks Indonesia as the first country to deny access to the AI tool amidst global scrutiny.
• Officials cited non-consensual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights and digital security.

Indonesia has taken a significant step by temporarily blocking Elon Musk's Grok chatbot, becoming the first country to do so over concerns regarding the risk of AI-generated pornographic content. The country’s Minister of Communications and Digital Affairs, Meutya Hafid, emphasized that the practice of creating non-consensual sexual deepfakes represents a "serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space," as stated in reports from SCMP and Channel News Asia.

The Indonesian government’s decision to block Grok follows a wave of scrutiny from multiple countries regarding the app's ability to generate images that sexualize minors and adults. xAI, the company behind Grok, responded by restricting image generation to paying subscribers in a bid to address safety concerns while underlining that it was taking steps to improve its safeguards against inappropriate content, according to CBS News, Al Jazeera, and Reuters.

Elon Musk has acknowledged that individuals using Grok to produce illegal content would face the same consequences as if they had directly uploaded such content. This statement comes amid mounting criticism from global leaders, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer describing the measure to restrict features to paying subscribers as merely "insulting" to victims of non-consensual deepfakes, as echoed in reports from India Times and Anadolu Agency.