THE Government on Friday issued a stern notice to Elon Musk-led social media platform X to immediately remove all vulgar, obscene and unlawful content, especially generated by AI app Grok, or face action under the law. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity) has issued a notice to the Chief Compliance Officer for India operations of X for failure to observe statutory due diligence obligations under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and IT Rules, 2021. “...X is hereby directed to...Remove or disable access, without delay, to all content already generated or disseminated in violation of applicable laws, in strict compliance with the timelines prescribed under the IT Rules, 2021, without vitiating the evidence in any manner,” the order dated January 2 said.

 

Meity has also directed X to take action against offending content, users and accounts. The Ministry has directed the US-based social media firm to submit a detailed action taken report (ATR) within 72 hours of the date when the order was issued. The Government has received from time to time, including through public discourse and representations from various parliamentary stakeholders, that certain categories of content circulating on X may not be in compliance with applicable laws relating to decency and obscenity, the order said.

 

Earlier in the day, Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi had written a letter to Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, seeking urgent intervention on increasing incidents of the AI app Grok being misused to create vulgar photos of women and post them on social media. The order said that “Grok AI” service, developed by X, 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 to denigrate them.