The government on Friday issued a formal warning and binding directive to Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, over what it described as repeated failures to prevent the generation and circulation of obscene and sexually explicit content through its AI tool Grok. It cautioned that non-compliance could lead to the loss of legal immunity and criminal action against the platform and its senior officers.
Loss of Section 79 Immunity
The ministry of electronics and information technology(MeitY) directed the company’s Chief Compliance Officer for India operations to submit an action taken report within 72 hours and to immediately overhaul its technical and governance safeguards around Grok. Failure to comply, the ministry said, could result in the withdrawal of X’s intermediary protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, exposing it to liability under multiple criminal and civil laws.
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The letter said that the ministry had received repeated representations, including from parliamentary stakeholders, flagging content on the platform that may violate Indian laws on decency and obscenity. It said Grok, which is integrated into X, was being misused to generate and circulate “obscene images or videos of women in a derogatory or vulgar manner”, including through fake accounts, image manipulation and synthetic AI outputs.
Targeting Synthetic Misuse
“This is not limited to creation of fake accounts but also targets women who host or publish their images or videos,” the letter said, adding that such conduct reflected a “serious failure of platform-level safeguards and enforcement mechanisms” and amounted to a “gross misuse of artificial intelligence technologies”.
MeitY said X was not adequately complying with its statutory due diligence obligations under the IT Act and the IT Rules, 2021, particularly in relation to content that is obscene, pornographic, paedophilic or otherwise unlawful. The acts and omissions were viewed with “grave concern”, the ministry said, as they undermine the dignity, privacy and safety of women and children, normalise sexual harassment in digital spaces and weaken the statutory compliance framework applicable to social media intermediaries.
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The ministry reminded X that compliance with Indian law is not optional and that intermediary exemptions are conditional on strict adherence to content moderation and takedown obligations. “Failure to observe such due diligence obligations shall result in the loss of the exemption from liability under section 79 of the IT Act,” the letter warned.
As part of its directions, MeitY asked X to immediately undertake a comprehensive review of Grok’s prompt processing, output generation, image handling and safety guardrails to ensure the tool does not generate or facilitate nudity, sexualisation or sexually explicit content. The platform was also instructed to strictly enforce its user policies, including suspending or terminating violating accounts, and to remove existing unlawful content within prescribed timelines without compromising evidence.
X has been asked to submit a detailed action taken report outlining technical measures adopted for Grok, oversight exercised by its chief compliance officer, actions taken against offending content and users, and mechanisms put in place to meet mandatory crime-reporting requirements under Indian law.
The ministry reiterated that hosting or sharing obscene or sexually explicit content, including through AI-enabled systems, attracts penal consequences under the IT Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and laws governing indecent representation of women and child protection. It warned that non-compliance would invite “strict legal consequences” against the platform, its responsible officers and users, without further notice. |
