X blocks 3,500 posts, deletes 600 accounts after Centre flags obscene content: Report

The action comes in response to a notice issued last week by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which warned X Corp over the misuse of its artificial intelligence tools to generate and share explicit material.

The ministry had asked the company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, to submit an action-taken report within 72 hours and cautioned that failure to comply could attract strict legal consequences under Indian law.

According to the ministry, users were exploiting X’s AI assistant, Grok, to create fake accounts and produce obscene, nude and explicit images and videos of women in a derogatory and vulgar manner.

The content, officials said, was being generated through prompts, image manipulation and synthetic outputs, amounting to indecent representation and harassment.

MeitY directed X to carry out a comprehensive review of Grok’s technical systems and governance framework to ensure such content is neither generated nor circulated on the platform.

The ministry also instructed the company to strictly enforce its user policies, including suspending or terminating accounts found to be violating the rules.

The notice warned that continued non-compliance could result in the loss of safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act.

It further said violations could trigger penal action under multiple laws, including the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

The ministry clarified that the issue extends beyond fake accounts and also involves the targeting of women whose images or videos are being generated or altered using AI tools without consent.

“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 notice said.

As per the government sources quoted by NDTV, X has assured the Centre that it will not allow obscene content on its platform and will comply with all applicable regulations.