X Blocks and Deletes Accounts in Major Crackdown Over Grok Obscenity Concerns

According to official sources, social networking platform X has removed 600 accounts and restricted 3,500 postings after the Centre reported pornographic content on the website. According to the sources, X has promised the government that it will abide by laws and refrain from allowing pornographic material on its platform.

This occurs one week after pornographic material on X, formerly Twitter, was reported by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Within 72 hours, the ministry requested that X Corp, led by billionaire Elon Musk, submit an action taken report regarding immediate compliance for preventing the hosting, creation, publication, transmission, sharing, or uploading of explicit, obscene, nude, and indecent content through the misuse of AI-based services like "Grok" and xAI's other services.

Centre Taking a Strong Stance Against Non-Compliance

According to the Center's direction, non-compliance will be taken very seriously and might have severe legal repercussions for the platform and the relevant authorities under Indian law. According to the ministry's letter, it has been noted that users are abusing Grok by setting up accounts to host, produce, publish, or distribute pornographic photographs or films of women in a rude or disparaging way in order to indecently insult them.

To stop the creation of such content, the ministry requested that X perform a thorough analysis of Grok's governance and technical structures. Grok, X's AI assistant, is required to enforce stringent user regulations, including suspending and terminating violators, according to the warning.

Ministry Putting a Strict Scanner on X

According to the ministry, X's failure to comply might lead to the loss of safe harbour under Section 79 of the IT Act and result in legal action under several regulations, such as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and the Indecent Representation of Women Act.

According to the letter, prompts, image alteration, and synthetic outputs are used to target women who host or broadcast their photographs or videos, in addition to those who create phoney accounts. According to the letter, such behaviour amounts to egregious misuse of artificial intelligence technologies in violation of relevant laws and represents a major failure of platform-level controls and enforcement measures.