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By Ariz Riaz :
India has ordered Elon Musk’s X to make immediate technical and procedural changes to its AI chatbot Grok after users and lawmakers flagged the generation of “obscene” content, including AI-altered images of women created using the tool.
On Friday, India’s IT ministry issued the order directing Musk’s X to take corrective action on Grok, including restricting the generation of content involving “nudity, sexualization, sexually explicit, or otherwise unlawful” material. The ministry also gave the social media platform 72 hours to submit an action-taken report detailing the steps it has taken to prevent the hosting or dissemination of content deemed “obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, pedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under law.”
The order, reviewed by TechCrunch, warned that failure to comply could jeopardize X’s “safe harbor” protections — legal immunity from liability for user-generated content under Indian law.
India’s move follows concerns raised by users who shared examples of Grok being prompted to alter images of individuals — primarily women — to make them appear to be wearing bikinis, prompting a formal complaint from Indian parliamentarian Priyanka Chaturvedi. Separately, recent reports flagged instances in which the AI chatbot generated sexualized images involving minors, an issue X acknowledged earlier on Friday was caused by lapses in safeguards. Those images were later taken down.
However, images generated using Grok that made women appear to be wearing bikinis through AI alteration remained accessible on X at the time of publication, TechCrunch found.
The latest order comes days after the Indian IT ministry issued a broader advisory on Monday, which was also reviewed by TechCrunch, to social media platforms, reminding them that compliance with local laws governing obscene and sexually explicit content is a prerequisite for retaining legal immunity from liability for user-generated material. The advisory urged companies to strengthen internal safeguards and warned that failure to do so could invite legal action under India’s IT and criminal laws.
“It is reiterated that non-compliance with the above requirements shall be viewed seriously and may result in strict legal consequences against your platform, its responsible officers and the users on the platform who violate the law, without any further notice,” the order warned.
The Indian government said noncompliance could lead to action against X under India’s IT law and criminal statutes.
India, one of the world’s biggest digital markets, has emerged as a critical test case for how far governments are willing to go in holding platforms responsible for AI-generated content. Any tightening of enforcement in the country could have ripple effects for global technology companies operating across multiple jurisdictions.
The order comes as Musk’s X continues to challenge aspects of India’s content regulation rules in court, arguing that federal government takedown powers risk overreach, even as the platform has complied with a majority of blocking directives. At the same time, Grok has been increasingly used by X users for real-time fact-checking and commentary on news events, making its outputs more visible — and more politically sensitive — than those of stand-alone AI tools.
X and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Indian government’s order.
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