Days after Malaysia made global headlines by announcing it would temporarily ban Grok over its ability to generate “grossly offensive and nonconsensual manipulated images”, the generative AI tool was conversing breezily with accounts registered in the country.
“Still here! That DNS block in Malaysia is pretty lightweight – easy to bypass with a VPN or DNS tweak,” Grok’s account on X said in response to a question from a user.
Grok’s ability to allow users to create sexually explicit images, including images of children, has created a global outcry over recent weeks, with regulators and politicians around the world launching investigations. Indonesia and Malaysia became the first two countries to announce blocks on the technology, with Malaysia’s regulatory body saying last Sunday it had “directed a temporary restriction” on access to Grok, effective as of 11 January 2026. Officials in the Philippines have said they too plan to ban the technology.
Blocking access to Grok is not straightforward, however. The technology not only exists across multiple platforms, including a standalone app and website, but is also integrated across X, which, along with Grok, is owned by Elon Musk’s xAI.
Over the past week, X users, and even Grok itself, have advised people on how to bypass restrictions. This includes using a VPN – many of which are available for free – or changing domain name system (DNS), the protocol on the internet that turns address names into IP addresses that load websites.
When the Guardian tried to use Grok in Indonesia, its website was working even without a VPN, though the Grok app did not work. Grok was also still responding to Indonesian accounts on X, where it functions as an integrated chatbot. X has not been subject to a ban.
Even if governments could completely restrict Grok, though, this is not a real solution, said Nana Nwachukwu, an AI governance expert and PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin.
“Blocking Grok is like slapping a Band-Aid on a weeping wound that you haven’t cleaned,” she said. “You block Grok, and then you go around shouting you’ve done something. Meanwhile, people can use VPNs to access the same platforms.” Or, they could simply turn to one of the many other platforms that offer the same functions, including “smaller, general purpose AI systems that are largely unknown,” Nwachukwu added.
Governments should instead focus on law enforcement and investigating individuals who use such tools to break the law, she added. “Platforms are required by law to provide information to law enforcement when a crime has been committed,” Nwachukwu said. “If we see people being arrested, people being tried in courts, people being jailed for these offences, that’s a sign that this is a real crime,”
X should build accountability into its platform – and clean itself up, said Nwachukwu: “All of those offending images should be removed from the platform.”
On Wednesday, X announced additional safeguards in response to continued public anger, saying that it would stop the @Grok account on X from “allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis”, including paid subscribers. However, the Guardian found that it was possible to get around such restrictions by using the standalone version of Grok, easily accessible through a web browser, to create short videos in which clothes are removed from images of real women.
This could then be posted to X’s public platform, where it could be viewed by users around the world within seconds.
Musk’s company also said that, in jurisdictions where such content is illegal, it will geoblock the ability of all users in those locations to generate images of real people in bikinis, or similar attire, in Grok on X, adding that “xAI is implementing similar geoblocking measures for the Grok app”.
Experts warn users may still be able to get around such “geoblocks” through a VPN. It is also not clear in which countries such restrictions will be implemented.
In Malaysia, the communications minister, Fahmi Fadzil, has said restrictions on Grok would only be lifted once the ability to produce harmful content has been disabled, according to local media reports.
Dr Nuurrianti Jalli, a visiting fellow at the media, technology and society programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, said the threat of blocking Grok can be a useful way to apply pressure to companies to respond quickly, adding that it “shifts the debate from ‘individual bad actors’ to questions of platform responsibility, safety by design, and accountability when safeguards fail,” she said. It can also “slow the spread of abuse, reduce casual misuse and create a clear boundary around what authorities consider unacceptable.”
In Indonesia, Grok has been used to create nonconsensual sexualised images of singers and celebrities, including one of the country’s most popular girl groups JKT48, while in Malaysia, women report similar abuses, including cases where the tool has been used to remove their hijabs, according to Malaysian media.
Some women resorted to publicly telling Grok on X that they do not authorise it to “crawl, take, process or edit” any of their photos.
Nuurrianti said governments should push for greater transparency “about how safety measures are implemented, how abuse reports are handled and what enforcement steps are taken when harmful content is generated or circulated.”
The Malaysian communications and multimedia commission and the ministry of communications did not respond to a request for comment. Indonesia’s ministry of communication and digital affairs also did not respond.
Nwachukwu said safeguards should be built into the AI system, rather than “gates” built around it. “Both the [geographic] restriction from X, [and] the restriction from the government is gated access, and gates can be broken down,” she said.
Additional reporting from Hidayatullah
