Malaysia will take legal action against Musk's X and xAI over misuse of Grok chatbot

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian authorities said Tuesday they will take legal action against Elon Musk's social media platform X and its artificial intelligence unit xAI, accusing the companies of failing to ensure the safety of users of its Grok chatbot.

The move came just days after Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block access to Grok, as concerns grow that it is being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement that it has identified the misuse of Grok to generate and distribute harmful content including sexually explicit, indecent, extremely offensive as well as non-consensual manipulated images.

It said it served notices to X and xAI this month to remove the harmful content but no action has been taken.

“Content allegedly involving women and children is a matter of great concern. Such conduct is against Malaysian law and undermines the security commitments” stated by the companies, it said. The commission has appointed a lawyer and said legal proceedings would begin soon.

There is growing scrutiny of generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, and concern that existing safeguards are failing to prevent their abuse.

Launched in 2023, Grok is free to use on X. An image generator feature, Grok Imagine, was added last year and included a so-called spicy mode that can generate adult content. Grok has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children.

Grok has come under pressure in the European Union, India and the United Kingdom, which said Monday it was moving to criminalize “nudification apps.” Britain’s media regulator also launched an investigation into whether Grok broke the law by allowing users to share sexualized images of children.

Last week, Grok limited image generation and editing to paying users following a global backlash over sexualized deepfakes of people, but critics say it didn’t fully address the problem.

Musk and his companies have not publicly commented on the Southeast Asian restrictions. xA1 has been giving an automated reply to media queries which stated, “Legacy Media Lies.”

FILE - Workers install lighting on an "X" sign atop the company headquarters, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, July 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

FILE - Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Oval Office of the White House, May 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Central bankers from around the world said Tuesday they “stand in full solidarity” with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after President Donald Trump dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed with the Justice Department investigating and threatening criminal charges.

Powell “has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest," read the statement signed by nine national central bank heads including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.

They added that “the independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability."

The dispute is ostensibly about Powell’s testimony to Congress in June over the cost of a massive renovation of Fed buildings. But in a statement Sunday, Powell, abandoning his previous attempt to ignore Trump’s relentless criticism, called the administration’s threat of criminal charges “pretexts’’ in the president’s campaign to seize control of U.S. interest rate policy from the Fed’s technocrats.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell and the Fed for not moving faster to cut rates. Economists warn that a politicized Fed that caves in to the president’s demands will damage its credibility as an inflation fighter and likely lead investors to demand higher rates before investing in U.S. Treasurys.

Other signers of the statement carried on the ECB's website were Erik Thedeen, governor of Sweden's central bank; Christian Kettel Thomsen, chair of Denmark's central bank; Swiss National Bank Chair Martin Schlegel; Michele Bullock, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia; Tiff Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada; Bank of Korea Governor Chang Yong Rhee; Gabriel Galipolo, governor of the Banco Central do Brasil.

Also attaching their names were François Villeroy de Galhau, board chair of the Bank for International Settlements, and Pablo Hernández de Cos, BIS general manager. The BIS is an international organization of central banks based in Basel, Switzerland.

One prominent central bank not included in the statement was the Bank of Japan. The statement said that more signatures could be added later.

A video of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell plays on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)