'Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will...': Elon Musk warns users after India's takedown order

Elon Musk, the owner of microblogging platform X, has warned that users who generate illegal content using the platform’s artificial intelligence tool Grok will face the same consequences as those who upload unlawful material.

The statement, posted on Saturday, came a day after India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) ordered X to immediately remove all vulgar, obscene and unlawful content on its platform, with particular focus on material generated by the AI app Grok.

“Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,”  Musk said on X, responding to concerns over the circulation of “inappropriate images”.

He was replying to a post that argued responsibility lay with users rather than the AI tool. The post said, “Some people are saying Grok is creating inappropriate images. But that's like blaming a pen for writing something bad. A pen doesn't decide what gets written. The person holding it does. Grok works the same way. What you get depends a lot on what you put in. Think about it!.”

The government has directed X to take action against offending content, users and accounts. MeitY has also asked the US-based social media company to submit a detailed action taken report (ATR) within 72 hours of the order being issued.

In its directive, the ministry said it had received complaints “from time to time, including through public discourse and representations from various parliamentary stakeholders” that certain categories of content circulating on X may not be in compliance with laws governing decency and obscenity.

The move followed a letter from Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi to Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, seeking urgent intervention over what she described as a rise in incidents where the AI app Grok was being misused to generate vulgar images of women and circulate them on social media.

According to the government order, the “Grok AI” service developed by X is being misused by users to create fake accounts to host, generate, publish or share obscene images or videos of women “in a derogatory or vulgar manner in order to indecently denigrate them”.

Separately, on December 29, MeitY issued an advisory asking social media platforms to immediately review their compliance frameworks and act against obscene and unlawful content. It warned that failure to do so could invite prosecution under Indian law.

The advisory followed the ministry’s assessment that platforms had not been acting strictly enough against “obscene, vulgar, inappropriate, and unlawful content”.

(With inputs from PTI)