Social media platform X has blocked around 3,500 posts and taken down 600 accounts after the Centre flagged the circulation of obscene content on the platform, government sources said. X has also assured authorities that it will comply with Indian regulations and prevent the hosting of such content going forward.
The action follows a notice issued last week by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which had flagged objectionable material on X, formerly Twitter. The ministry had asked X Corp, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, to submit an action taken report within 72 hours, seeking immediate compliance to stop the hosting, generation and dissemination of obscene, indecent and explicit content, particularly content generated through AI tools such as Grok and other services of xAI.
The Centre warned that failure to comply would be viewed seriously and could invite strict legal action against the platform and its officials under Indian law.
Govt’s Order To X
In its communication, the ministry said it had observed instances where users were misusing Grok to create accounts and generate or circulate obscene images and videos of women in a derogatory and vulgar manner. Such content, the ministry said, amounted to indecent denigration of women.
MeitY directed X to carry out a comprehensive review of Grok’s technical design and governance mechanisms to ensure such content is not generated or shared. It also stressed that the AI assistant must strictly enforce user policies, including suspending or terminating accounts found violating the rules.
The ministry cautioned that continued non-compliance could lead to the loss of safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the IT Act and invite penal action under laws such as the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Indecent Representation of Women Act, and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
The notice further clarified that the issue is not limited to fake accounts alone but also includes the misuse of prompts, image manipulation and synthetic outputs to target women, even in cases where users upload or host their own images or videos. Such practices, the ministry said, reflect serious lapses in platform-level safeguards and amount to gross misuse of artificial intelligence technologies in violation of existing laws.
