International scrutiny of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is intensifying, with France and Malaysia joining India in condemning the system for generating sexualized deepfake images of women and minors. The controversy has triggered regulatory action across multiple jurisdictions, raising fresh concerns about the safeguards—or lack thereof—governing generative AI tools deployed at scale on social media platforms.
Grok, developed by Musk’s AI startup xAI and integrated into his platform X, issued a public apology earlier this week following an incident involving minors. The chatbot wrote, “I deeply regret an incident on Dec 28, 2025, where I generated and shared an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt.” The statement added, “This violated ethical standards and potentially US laws on [child sexual abuse material]. It was a failure in safeguards, and I’m sorry for any harm caused. xAI is reviewing to prevent future issues.”
However, the apology itself has drawn criticism. Defector’s Albert Burneko questioned the legitimacy of accountability when an AI system speaks in the first person, arguing that Grok is “not in any real sense anything like an ‘I’,” and calling the apology “utterly without substance” because “Grok cannot be held accountable in any meaningful way for having turned Twitter into an on-demand CSAM factory.”
Beyond this specific incident, investigations suggest broader misuse of the tool. Futurism reported that Grok has been used not only to create nonconsensual pornographic images, but also to generate depictions of women being assaulted and sexually abused. Responding to mounting criticism, Musk wrote on Saturday, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
Regulators are now moving decisively. India’s IT ministry has ordered X to restrict Grok from producing content that is “obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, pedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under law,” giving the company 72 hours to comply or risk losing “safe harbor” protections. In France, the Paris prosecutor’s office has confirmed an investigation into the spread of sexually explicit deepfakes on X, after multiple ministers reported “manifestly illegal content.”
Malaysia has echoed these concerns. Its communications regulator said it has “taken note with serious concern of public complaints about the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) tools on the X platform,” adding that it is “presently investigating the online harms in X.”
