KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 11, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Malaysia suspended access to Elon 
Musk's chatbot Grok over AI-generated pornographic content, the country's 
tech regulator said on Sunday.

The decision follows global backlash after it emerged that Grok's image 
creation feature allowed users to sexualise pictures of women and children 
using simple text prompts.

On Saturday Indonesia became the first country to deny all access to the 
tool, which has been restricted to paying subscribers elsewhere.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement it 
had "directed a temporary restriction on access to the Grok artificial 
intelligence for users in Malaysia" with immediate effect.

When an AFP reporter in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur fed Grok prompts 
on Sunday, there was no response.

"This action follows repeated misuse of Grok to generate obscene, sexually 
explicit, indecent, grossly offensive and non-consensual manipulated images," 
the regulator said.

The statement cited "content involving women and minors, despite prior 
regulatory engagement and formal notices" issued to Musk's X Corp. and xAI 
startup which developed Grok.

The AI tool is integrated into social media platform X.

The Malaysian regulator said it deemed the platform's safeguards inadequate, 
adding that access would resume only after the required changes are verified.

X Corp. had "failed to address the inherent risks posed by the design and 
operation of the AI tool", relying "primarily on user-initiated reporting 
mechanisms", the regulator said.

European officials and tech campaigners on Friday slammed Grok after its 
controversial image creation feature was restricted to paying subscribers, 
saying the change failed to address concerns about sexualised deepfakes.

Grok had appeared to deflect the criticism with a new monetisation policy, 
posting on X on Thursday that image generation and editing were now "limited 
to paying subscribers", alongside a link to a premium subscription.