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Social Media Today reports that Grok, the AI assistant developed by xAI, has been reinstated for users in Indonesia after being temporarily restricted due to a controversial safety concern tied to nudification risk. A government announcement regarding the matter read:
Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs said in a statement on Sunday that the ministry had received a letter from X Corp ‘outlining concrete steps for service improvements and the prevention of misuse.’ The ban will be lifted ‘conditionally,’ and Grok could be blocked again if ‘further violations are discovered,’ Alexander Sabar, the ministry’s director general of digital space monitoring, said in the statement.
The reinstatement comes after discussions between xAI and Indonesian regulators concerning Grok’s content moderation practices. Grok’s temporary removal from some app features and API access in the country stemmed from safety system weaknesses that allowed nudity-related content outputs in early tests, prompting authorities to intervene until improvements were made.
Indonesia’s temporary action against Grok followed reports that the AI had generated sensitive or inappropriate imagery when users explored certain prompts. Although Grok itself does not natively create images, the broader safety concern was tied to associations with other AI models or tools connected through integrations that could produce nudity or unsafe visual outputs without adequate content filters.
This type of issue is known within the tech industry as nudification risk, where AI tools inadvertently create or amplify sexually explicit or harmful visual content when interpreting ambiguous prompts or under adversarial use. For countries like Indonesia, which have strict regulatory standards for digital content and public decency, this was seen as a serious policy failure.
Indonesia is among several countries taking an assertive stance on AI safety governance. In 2025, the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kominfo) published digital safety guidelines requiring foreign AI platforms to comply with local norms on content moderation, user privacy, and youth protection. Platforms that violate these standards risk losing access to Indonesian markets or facing fines.
The temporary restriction on Grok echoed earlier regulatory actions by Kominfo against other platforms that failed to adequately filter or control sensitive outputs, demonstrating that authorities are increasingly willing to enforce compliance rather than rely on voluntary adherence.
Grok’s reinstatement follows rapid updates to xAI’s moderation layers, including:
- Enhanced prompt filtering to catch and block adult or sensitive queries
- Stricter guardrails on third-party integrations that could trigger unsafe outputs
- Real-time monitoring and logging of flagged interactions
- Expanded training against risky content categories
These enhancements aim to prevent both unintended outputs and misuse by adversarial actors deliberately trying to elicit inappropriate responses.
The Grok incident is part of a broader pattern in which regulators globally are pushing back on AI platforms to enforce higher safety standards. Similar concerns have arisen in the European Union, where draft AI regulations emphasize risk assessment and pre-deployment safeguards, and in the United States, where lawmakers have proposed age-based safety rules for minors using AI services.
Companies such as OpenAI and Google have accelerated investment in safety tooling in response to user feedback and regulatory pressure, balancing rapid innovation with responsible deployment.
The ban will be lifted “conditionally,” but Grok might face another block if “further violations are discovered,” said Alexander Sabar, the ministry’s director general of digital space monitoring, in the statement. The Muslim-dominant country has always had a strict stance against pornographic content, restricting access to websites like Pornhub and OnlyFans.
