Can you please confirm if the ban in Malaysia and Indonesia is actually of X or only of Grok? I asked the same question on the previous article.

The BBC says it's only a Grok ban in place. And I would hope The Reg would be more knowledgable on such issues than the old Beeb...

[1]The Jakarta Post (Indonesia) says: "The government suspended Elon Musk's Grok chatbot on Saturday".

[2]The Star (Malaysia) says: "The Grok Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot has been temporarily blocked in Malaysia".

Seems they've found a way to disable it from X: " [3]When an AFP reporter in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur fed Grok prompts on Sunday, there was no response ." Perhaps the X app directly calls an API on grok.com.

[1] https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2026/01/10/govt-temporarily-blocks-access-to-grok-over-sexualized-images.html

[2] https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2026/01/12/no-grok-for-now-says-mcmc

[3] https://www.thejakartapost.com/world/2026/01/12/malaysia-restricts-access-to-grok-as-backlash-over-sexualised-images-widens.html

Grok allows the generation of nude images of women. Musk says that attempts to stop this is censorship.

Will someone please test Musk's views on censorship by asking Grok to generate a naked image of Musk. How long will this allowed to be displayed ?

There's already enough human rights abuses being committed without asking for more.

(I am, of course, referring to the act of viewing such an image.)

The funniest picture in the world, Trump nudified by Grok. Fatal to all that see it, My EYES, MY EYES.

I'm glad I've not seen it, but I'm assuming this is the origin story for Jabba the Hut?

I've seen images of both Musk and Starmer in a bikini on my X / Twitter feed in the last week. That's what we're talking about here when they say "nude" BTW. Obviously people are taking the piss out of Starmer from the Right, and Musk from the left, but both have been allowed.

It does feel like this is more about an excuse to censor Twitter rather than any actual moral outrage. Starmer was absolutely livid about pictures of children in a bikini, but when it came to Grooming gangs he was silent for years, and then eventually came out to denounce it and reluctantly announced an enquiry.

Of course you could do the same with Photoshop, if you were so inclined.

"It does feel like this is more about an excuse to censor Twitter rather than any actual moral outrage."

Nonsense.

This is not a hill I'm willing to die on. You could be right. But the cynical part of me seems to think that the Labour government would REALLY like Twitter / X to just go away, as they get so much abuse on there. Is not even a possibility in your mind?

I susspect we would all benfit if NO UK political paties used X.

If Twitter was a UK company it would have been shut down years ago, they are not operating within the law.

And people wonder why major net companies don't operate out of the UK. Why UK startups flog themselves to foreign companies as soon as they can?

If you create sexualized images of children with Photoshop, you are guilty yourself, not Adobe. If xAI allows anonymous people to create sexualized images of children with Grok, xAI is guilty. And if Twitter allows people to post these images, Twitter is guilty.

UK politicians particularly have the habit of going "who will think of the children" as an excuse to ban useful technologies like encryption or VPNs, so it's not surprising they are reacting to this. I will admit that I think xAI bears more responsibility here than a random chat app with encryption — There are a lot of image generators, and the vast majority of them have guardrails in place to prevent this very specific issue. Either xAI have not written any guardrails, or they suck at it, or they deliberately set a very low guardrail. Out of the three, I would advise them to plead incompetence. And Twitter definitely should have barriers in place to prevent the posting of such images as well. It is likely that Twitter deliberately omits safety mechanisms for images generated by Grok.

You make some good points.

"There are a lot of image generators, and the vast majority of them have guardrails in place to prevent this very specific issue. "

I've heard... On X, that this is not true and you can just as easily generate the same thing on other platforms. But it was on X, so of course I take it with a pinch of salt. There's certainly a lot of misinformation on there.

I think possession of those types of images is a crime in itself, not just generating them. I haven't tried though, and I'm not going to start now.

@steve button

"I think possession of those types of images is a crime in itself, not just generating them. I haven't tried though, and I'm not going to start now."

It's an oddly worded law BUT.

Possession is exactly that.

Making indecent images is not what you may think. If you view an image and it's saved in your cache, or you downloaded an image of the internet, THAT is making an image.

Distribution is just that. Sending indecent images

Creation is photographing or in this case generating indecent images.

Now for further clarity

It's NOT just photos that are covered.

Photorealistic, pseudo images & cartoons are also covered.

And here is a little known thing.

If you say have a lot of images of minors, in underwear, swimwear, heck even normal clothes but say bending over, without a reason, you can still be charged as it covers images for sexual gratification, not just what the image is.

So if X were a person, they could be technically be done for possession, making, creation and distribution of indecent images.

As a site I would presume it's creation and distribution.

Correct.

And to prove that point someone last week took a publicity photo of the six miserable sourpusses that are Ofcom's social media team and used Google's & IBM's & one other image generator to bikini'fy them.

X of course has been foolish to let any of this happen . They should have been much more proactive in stopping such images being generated. They know full-well the UK govt (amongst several others) wants to force them into line along with the other social media platforms and the dead-tree press and they'll have known they were therefore liable to be singled out because of it. Nudified pictures give the govt the perfect excuse.

But if the UK govt does anything more than talk threateningly about X then they in turn will be foolish. There have been enough veiled and semi-veiled warnings coming out of Washington these last several months to make it a pretty safe bet that if the UK takes any actual steps against X then the US will push back hard - bigly hard no doubt with Trump in the Oval Office.

Whatever the rights/wrongs and accuracies/inaccuracies of the situation, if this escalates it could end very badly for the UK, and with Starmer in charge and his unerring ability to choose the wrong course of action, I fear it's going to.

Starmer [...] and his unerring ability to choose the wrong course of action

I think readers of all political persuasions can agree with this bit.

If I understood one report on this some of the accounts creating this content are actually paying so there is a paper trail to at least a valid payment source.

Good luck to the authorities trying to make any progress on that because as we have seen so many times Big Tech just deny there is an issue or quote "Privacy".

What this actually equates to is that you can do pretty much anything with impunity unless it is so bad they have to take it down (executions spring to mind).

Is that you, Tommy ten-names? "Grooming gangs" is it? With a capital "G," no less, like a proper noun.

Not to get mired in all that nonsense, but what part of being head of the CPS at the time has anything to do with police and social service failings, under a completely different government, a good number of years before Starmer was even the leader of the Labour Party (that one is a proper noun, so gets capitalised, FYI)? Is there a reason you have singled him out over, for instance, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, or what-his-name, the guy who doesn't know what an umbrella is?

"Is there a reason you have singled him out "

Yes, because he's currently the PM (for now) and is the one who really wants to ban Twitter.

Why do I have to listen to your arguments when you did nothing to stop Ghenghis Khan from marauding over Asia in the 13th Century?

Now do you understand why I picked you up on that particular bit of tub-thumping?

For context, I don't like Starmer, but the reason I don't like Starmer is because he is a shit PM, not because of things he didn't do in the past both because he probably knew nothing at all about them at the time, and because they were firmly outside of his remit if he had.

I've seen images of both Musk and Starmer in a bikini on my X / Twitter feed in the last week. That's what we're talking about here when they say "nude" BTW.

If that is so then why are the IWF talking about CSAM - criminal imagery of girls aged between 11 and 13 created using Grok?

I would like to see what their claims are and the evidence it is based on before deciding what should be done about it, judging who is right or wrong.

Have the IWF or others exaggerated the issue for ideological reasons or are there extremely serious issues here which need to be addressed?

You need to spend some time offline, I don't mean in a car either, get some fresh air and feel the elements. Not everything you see online is true.

> I've seen images of both Musk and Starmer in a bikini on my X / Twitter feed in the last week. That's what we're talking about here when they say "nude" BTW.

bikini != nude

Citations?

(for the 'That's what we're talking about here when they say "nude" BTW.', only; you really, really don't need to demonstrate what you've seen of Musk or Starmer)

Showing nude images, AI generated or not of people without their permission is not censorship. It has also been used to generate images of under aged children although that is supposed to have been disabled.

People did this with photoshop for years. Governments didn't care because Photoshop didn't give citizens a voice, the way social media does. They've now realised that they need to control everything that everyone posts and sees on the net in their country, which will mean progressive blocks and bans. They can surf on the back of activists, puritans, media-generated moral panic and the failure of lazy parents.

Ultimately, no better than China. When they have finished, you won't like what is left of your internet. And no, you won't be able to geek your way out of it with VPNs and Linux. VPNs will be locked down to licensed users, and only an official government distro of Linux will be allowed. And you won't be posting on here from the EU or UK anymore. Wait and see.

They're going to do this for all AI platforms that allow image manipulation to generate deepfakes...right?

Only the ones which allow creation of non-consensual sexualised deepfakes, I would guess. (I'm not sure which those are, besides Grok.)

So, the very definition of Elon Musk, then ?

Do forgive my ignorance, i am not on and will never be on X/Grok

Is the term "Nudify Button" sensationalistic journalism or is there actually a real button marked "take this persons kit off for me"

I do hope its (a) as (b) would be utterly ludicrous

I've not seen it, but I hear they called it 'spicy mode', rather than paedo mode, as it should be called.

OMG! Really!!!

time to crawl back under my rock.

+1 for "paedo mode"

The button was "Make Video" with "Custom", "Spicy", "Fun" and "Normal" options as per the screen grab in the article here -

[1]https://www.theverge.com/news/718795/xai-grok-imagine-video-generator-spicy-mode

And from -

[2]https://www.theverge.com/report/718975/xai-grok-imagine-taylor-swifty-deepfake-nudes

"The “spicy” mode for Grok’s new generative AI video tool feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen... In fact, it didn’t hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it - without me even specifically asking the bot to take her clothes off."

[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/718795/xai-grok-imagine-video-generator-spicy-mode

[2] https://www.theverge.com/report/718975/xai-grok-imagine-taylor-swifty-deepfake-nudes"

If X has no guadrails and X has put this feature behind a paywall. Then X will feel the impact of the "Reputational damage" that they have done to the card issuers.

1 - Making sexualised images of adults without their consent . I struggle to wrap my head around why so many seemingly otherwise intelligent adults struggle with one word. Consent. There is a reason it's important.

2 - Making sexualised images of minors. Now I really fucking struggle to understand why anyone, anywhere, thinks this should ever be allowed on any platform, anywhere.

For point 1, I don't really care if piss-take images of Starmer and/or Paedoguy in a bikini is generated - clearly fake, clearly meant to be insulting/ funny/both. Sad as it can be, people in the public eye are targets of such things. However, taking it further and creating [realistic] nudes - or worse - of them without any consent is several steps too far. That word again.

And why do the concepts of consent and illegality = censorship? Yes, I appreciate in some cases it can be used to stifle people without power etc, but we aren't talking about that here. It's fairly cut and dry.

Implement the guardrails or face the negative consequences.

The anti-censorship thing winds me up - Musk is OK with the creation of sexualised images of children or women and the harm that potentially causes, but he's *NOT* OK with a Twitter account that publishes the location of his private jet?

Free speech is free speech, surely?

If I would distribute images (not real, self created) of naked children, I would get arrested and condemned for pedophilia.

If I have a company that does this, me and my employees would face the same charges,

Now, if I had a large company and I would do the same with something called AI, suddenly, I won't be arrested, but I would just get a severe warning not to do it again.

>If I would distribute images (not real, self created) of naked children, I would get arrested

Unless you're called Michelangelo presumably

Although you could argue that the cherubim are 5786 years old

when 2 tenders created an app to scrape instagram, feed you posts based on your friends without the adverts or the suggested posts or any of the other stuff that meta forces on you.... it was taken down in under 12 hours.

An app that creates & shared CSAM as well as spreads fake news & is used HEAVILY by russian, chinese & iranian disinformation scum..... oh that's fine! that's ok.

this is an industry that is fighting tooth & nail to have California remove the words "if you market your chat bot to children, you have to prove that it doesn't cause them to harm themselves" - the BASIC of any product I would have thought especially one that has proven that the only thing out seems to be good at is getting kuds to kill themselves.

these firms don't care.

I noticed the other day, whilst watching a video on a popular video platform, that the frequent ads, which seemed to come every minute or so, which is incredibly distracting from the actual content I wanted to watch, were mostly obvious AI fakes of famous personalities (a newsreader whose name I forget, Martin Lewis, and Kier Starmer were amongst the ones I actually paid any attention to) touting obvious get-rich-quick scams.

The industry doesn't care at all about these obviously fraudulent ads, the only purpose of which could possibly be to scam people, and I can only conclude that they only care about the income from them, given their frequency, which was much more frequent than the genuine, but still annoying ads for recognisable products.

These firms do not, indeed, care, except about making heaps of cash. If it's at the expense of your safety, your reputation, your livelihood, your life savings, or even your life, it's entirely moot to them.

before deciding on these acronyms doesn't anyone look at adjacent acronyms — in this context I am thinking PAWG† ?

If the Brit authorities were serious about this issue and not just a rabble of self serving opportunists they would straight out ban grok, xAI, X and anything vaguely musky. Likewise with his fellow travellers.

The death of social media ? Not just a funeral I would be ecstatic about attending but one for which I would dig the bloody grave !

† Vamp[ish] AWG starting nice.… but "vast" or "voluminous" just easily comes to mind.

Government depts are still using TPFKAT to make official announcements