New Delhi: Singer and activist Chinmayi Sripaada on Friday weighed in on the growing outrage over the alleged misuse of X’s AI chatbot Grok to generate sexually explicit and derogatory content targeting women.

“The tweet in this image. Nobody exposes the men like men themselves do,” Chinmayi Sripaada wrote on X, sharing a post that showed a user’s request made to Grok.

Her post came amid widespread backlash on social media over the alleged misuse of Grok’s image-generation and prompt features to create obscene and sexualised content involving women, often through fake accounts.

Against this backdrop, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has written to X (formerly Twitter) over what it described as a “failure to observe statutory due diligence obligations” under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and other applicable laws. The ministry has sought an Action Taken Report (ATR) for immediate compliance to prevent the hosting, generation and circulation of obscene and sexually explicit content through AI-based services such as Grok and other xAI tools.

Also Read: xAI reacts after massive outrage over 'Grok undress' prompts

In its letter to the Chief Compliance Officer, X Corp, India Operations, MeitY directed the platform to strictly desist from hosting, displaying, uploading, publishing, transmitting, storing or sharing content 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.”

“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,” the letter said.

The ministry underlined that hosting, generation, publication, transmission, sharing or uploading of “obscene, nude, indecent, sexually explicit, vulgar, paedophilic content or any content that is invasive of another's privacy including bodily privacy or otherwise unlawful,” including through AI-enabled systems, attracts serious penal consequences under multiple statutes.

“It has been reported and represented from time to time, including through public discourse and representations from various parliamentary stakeholders that certain categories of content circulating on your platform may not be in compliance with applicable laws relating to decency and obscenity,” the letter said.

“It has especially been observed that the service namely ‘Grok AI’ developed by you and integrated and made available on the X platform, 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,” it added.

The ministry noted that such misuse was not limited to fake accounts alone.

“Importantly, this is not limited to creating of fake accounts but also targets women who host or publish their images or videos, through prompts, image manipulation and synthetic outputs. Such conduct reflects a serious failure of platform-level safeguards and enforcement mechanisms, and amounts to gross misuse of artificial intelligence technologies in violation of applicable laws,” the letter said.

MeitY said it was of the view that provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, “are not being adequately adhered to by your platform,” particularly with regard to obscene, indecent and otherwise unlawful content.

“The aforesaid acts and omissions are viewed with grave concern, as they have the effect of violating the dignity, privacy and safety of women and children, normalising sexual harassment and exploitation in digital spaces, and undermining the statutory due diligence framework applicable to intermediaries operating in India,” it added.

The ministry directed X to immediately conduct a comprehensive technical, procedural and governance-level review of the AI-based application Grok, including its prompt processing, output generation using large language models, image handling and safety guardrails, to ensure it does not generate or facilitate unlawful content.

It also asked the platform to enforce its user terms, acceptable use policies and AI restrictions, including deterrent measures such as suspension and termination of violating accounts, and to remove or disable access to all violative content without delay, in compliance with timelines under the IT Rules, 2021.

X has been asked to submit a detailed Action Taken Report within 72 hours, covering technical and organisational measures adopted, oversight by the Chief Compliance Officer, actions taken against offending users and accounts, and mechanisms to ensure compliance with mandatory reporting under Section 33 of the BNSS.

Earlier, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi had written to Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, flagging concerns over the alleged misuse of AI tools on social media platforms to post objectionable images of women using fake accounts.