Philippines to join Indonesia, Malaysia in blocking Grok AI

[MANILA] The Philippines will join Malaysia and Indonesia in blocking Elon Musk’s Grok artificial intelligence chatbot amid growing concerns over sexualized images generated by the AI system, according to a top government official.

The Philippines’ cybercrime centre is working with the telecoms commission to implement the “immediate” blocking of Grok, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Henry Aguda told reporters on Thursday (Jan 15).

“All of the ISPs would have to initiate the blocking,” Aguda said, referring to internet service providers.

Globe Telecom has received the order from the Information and Communications Technology agency on blocking Grok and is working with it on some clarifications regarding implementation, Globe Telecom chief sustainability and corporate communications officer Yolanda Crisanto said in a text message.

A representative from rival Philippine telecoms firm PLDT didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Indonesia and Malaysia restricted access to Grok over the weekend over its generation of sexual content, with Jakarta saying the temporary ban was aimed at protecting “women, children, and the entire community from the risk of fake pornographic content generated using artificial intelligence technology.”

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Malaysia said it will take legal action against Musk’s X social media platform and his artificial intelligence company xAI for failing to protect users in the country.

Musk’s xAI has said it’s disabling the ability for people to use Grok to create sexualised images of real people amid the widespread criticism. BLOOMBERG