The central government on Friday came down hard on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) and asked for an action report (ATR) within 72 hours, calling for immediate compliance to prevent the hosting, creation and uploading of obscene, nude, indecent and sexually explicit content “through the misuse of AI-based services such as ‘Grok’ and other xAI services.”
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said Company X “failed to comply with statutory due diligence obligations” under the Information Technology Act 2000 and other applicable laws.
The notice sought a report on the specific technical and organizational steps taken or proposed for the Grok app, the role and oversight exercised by the Chief Compliance Officer, measures taken against illegal content, users and accounts, and mechanisms established to ensure compliance with the mandatory reporting requirements under Section 33 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).
He further noted that the problem goes beyond the creation of fake accounts, as women who share their own images or videos are also targeted for challenges, image manipulation and synthetic output. The statement said that this points to a serious failure of protection and enforcement by the platforms, which constitutes a gross misuse of artificial intelligence technologies in violation of applicable laws.
What if X doesn’t comply?
“Failure to comply with these due diligence obligations will result in the loss of exemption from liability under section 79 of the IT Act and you will also be liable for subsequent action as provided by any law, including the IT Act and the BNS,” the letter said.
Outrage
Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi has written to Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw expressing concern over the alleged misuse of artificial intelligence tools on social media to spread inappropriate images of women through fake accounts.
Terming it “unacceptable”, she said such practices constituted a serious violation of women’s privacy and urged the Center to take immediate action to protect their rights.
Meanwhile, French ministers informed prosecutors about sexually explicit content created by Musk’s xAI Grok AI chatbot on the X platform, saying on Friday that the “sexual and sexist” content was “clearly illegal”, according to Reuters.
Grok AI trend aimed at women
A disturbing and alarming trend started a few days ago on X, where users are using the Grok platform’s AI tool to manipulate photos of women and children into sexually explicit images. This issue has raised new concerns about sexual abuse with artificial intelligence. Users allegedly directly challenged Grok to edit images of women and children, create offensive content that was then widely shared without consent, and subject victims to harassment, humiliation and harm.
