At turn of year, Musk’s ‘spicy’ AI feature triggers sour response from Indian regulators

This comes days after India’s ministry of electronics and IT (Meity) warned social media platforms against a rising volume of sexually explicit content online.

Over the past two days, complaints emerged on X, formerly Twitter, about users prompting Grok, which is embedded in the platform, to modify photos of people into sexually explicit versions without obtaining consent. When questioned on community guidelines, Grok responded to users by stating that it is just an intermediary—a contentious protection offered to social media platforms by law in most nations that prevents them from being legally prosecuted against content posted by users.

Now, the Centre is taking cognizance of the matter, too. IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Friday the Centre is aware of the issue and cited a parliamentary standing committee’s recommendation for the government to impose strict laws on social media content. A senior official, who requested anonymity since discussions are ongoing, said Meity is reaching out to X for violation of regulations in India.

“Our stance on the matter will remain that any company not in compliance with rules and laws in India would lose safe harbour protection. But the government can only take action once there is a lawsuit filed against the incidents on X, and safe harbour clauses are brought up,” the official said.

Meity issued a formal notice to X on Friday.

“You are advised to strictly desist from the hosting, displaying, uploading, publication, transmission, storage, sharing of any content on your platform that is obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, paedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under any law for the time being in force in any manner whatsoever,” it said. “Failure to observe such due diligence obligations shall result in the loss of the exemption from liability under section 79 of the IT Act, and you shall also be liable for consequential action as provided under any law including the IT Act and BNS.”

Musk, with a net worth of $726 billion as per Forbes’s real-time list at the time of writing, is the owner of both Grok and X, and is also the world’s richest man. After buying what was formerly Twitter in a $44 billion deal, Musk disbanded the company’s content moderation team and most of Twitter’s employees in countries including India. His policy stances have typically drawn widespread scrutiny and starkly contrasting opinions, including his role in influencing the election of current US president, Donald Trump.

Messages sent to a representative of X in India did not receive responses. An email sent to the platform also went unanswered.

Lawyers and policy experts said the key issue here is to segregate defining social media intermediaries based on their actions.

“As far as sexually explicit content is concerned, users are well within their rights to pursue prosecution against manipulated computer imagery that may result in their pictures being converted to nude or sexual content, as India does not allow for any form of sexualized content, online,” said NS Nappinai, senior counsel at the Supreme Court and founder of Cyber Saathi, an organisation that promotes cyber safety and digital literacy.

“However, the time is now ripe for India to have AI-specific laws and regulations specifically against deepfakes and such forms of manipulated imagery harming their reputation and dignity,” said Nappinai. “Such actions require specific, stringent penal provisions, as against mere labelling AI-modified content that would not do much to protect a user in times of such crises.”

Nappinai also said that safe harbour protection requires more nuanced definitions in order to explicitly hold platforms accountable for the content they generate.

“Safe harbour exemption is meant to protect platforms against prosecution for third-party content. But, where such content is created or, as in this case, generated by the platform or tools it is offering, the platform cannot and ought not be permitted to seek such protection," she said. “Grok is importantly a part of the platform itself, and developed and deployed by it conscious of its capabilities. It would thus be erroneous to presume that Grok’s actions should be immune to prosecution.”

According to Nappinai, it may be expedient for the legislature to explicitly clarify and limit the applicability of safe harbour exemptions, especially in the age of AI and not leave it open for broad interpretation. “Merely because a platform may otherwise be an intermediary does not give it exemption for all content or actions on it.”

“Although ‘nothing real has happened,’ non-consensual synthetic sexual imagery of a real person is still considered unlawful. Here, the 'wrong' is the non-consensual sexualized depiction, coupled with the distribution of content. It is also an infringement of privacy, dignity, reputation and harm, irrespective of the physical occurrence of the act. Merely because it was synthetic will not save the occurrence from the penal provisions of the IT Act under sections 67 and 67A, or section 294 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita,” Sapra said.

He added that AI-modified imagery of a real person, shared without consent in a public forum, “legally amounts to harassment, and the absence of ‘real’ nudity or sexual conduct does not negate harassment.”

“The law looks at conduct, intent and violation of dignity and privacy, and not the dogmatic technicalities such as authenticity of the image,” Sapra said.