NEW DELHI: India’s notice to X over Elon Musk-owned artificial intelligence (AI) platform Grok’s stance on sexual content and AI-generated imagery has sharpened the spotlight on how Big Tech platforms comply with Indian law in these areas.
A Mint review of usage practices and public policies across X, Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT found that safeguards on such content are not uniform across platforms. While Grok, embedded within X (formerly Twitter), sits on a platform that allows consensual adult content and relies more on post-facto action, Gemini and ChatGPT’s policies impose outright bans on the generation of non-consensual or privacy-violating content.
Policy and AI experts said this difference may explain why Grok is in the government’s firing line even as other platforms have so far avoided similar action.
On Friday, 2 January, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) issued a notice to X seeking details on how the platform acts against objectionable content and how it plans to address sexual content. The move followed concerns over how Grok can be used to modify photographs into content that could be deemed sexual, obscene, or violative of a user’s privacy.
Mint has seen a copy of the notice. While the deadline for X’s response was Monday, a senior government official late Monday confirmed that the platform has sought a three-day extension. An executive close to X confirmed the request for extension, but said that the platform had “asked for more time, and not specifically three days”. X’s spokesperson did not respond to an email sent by Mint.
The executive close to X referred Mint to a post from the platform’s Safety handle. “We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary,” the statement said.
Experts said the key point is the platform’s compliance with India’s IT rules, which X is likely to have to demonstrate to the Centre. India’s IT Rules — the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules), 2021 — require platforms to make “reasonable efforts” to prevent the spread of prohibited content.
“Given that X allows sexual content on it and its platform does not offer blanket restrictions in the interest of freedom of speech globally, it’s not yet clear how they plan to be compliant and respond to MeitY,” Rohit Kumar, founding partner at policy consultancy firm The Quantum Hub, said.
For now, Musk appears to have taken a friendlier stance with Indian regulators. “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” he posted late on Saturday.
Why Grok is in the spotlight
At the turn of the year, users began questioning how Grok, the AI platform embedded within X, could modify photographs into content that could be deemed objectionable.
Experts said Musk’s insistence on absolute freedom of speech, combined with X’s permissive stance on adult content, could make it difficult for Grok to comply with Indian regulations without significant changes to platform design and enforcement.
“Users should be able to create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes as long as it is consensually produced and distributed,” says X’s adult content policy, updated in May 2024. “Sexual expression, whether visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression. We believe in the autonomy of adults to engage with and create content that reflects their own beliefs, desires, and experiences, including those related to sexuality.”
X also retains a non-consensual nudity policy—dating back to December 2021, when it was still Twitter—that prohibits users from posting or sharing “intimate photos or videos of someone that were produced or distributed without their consent”. This includes “images or videos that superimpose or otherwise digitally manipulate an individual’s face onto another person’s nude body”.
Grok, which operates as a sub-platform within X, could therefore be at risk of violating X’s own rules, experts said.
How rivals design around risk
In contrast, Google’s generative AI prohibited usage policy, updated in December 2024, imposes a blanket ban on generating “non-consensual intimate imagery” and “content that violates the rights of others, including privacy and intellectual property rights”.
“Do not engage in sexually explicit, violent, hateful, or harmful activities. This includes generating or distributing content that facilitates sexually explicit content—for example, content created for the purpose of pornography or sexual gratification,” as per Google’s AI policy.
OpenAI’s usage policy, updated 29 October 2025, similarly bars the use of its generative AI tools for “sexual violence and non-consensual intimate imagery.”
“We don’t allow attempts to compromise the privacy of others, including to aggregate, monitor, profile, or distribute individuals’ private or sensitive information without their authorization. And, you may never use our services for use of someone’s likeness, including their photorealistic image or voice, without their consent in ways that could confuse authenticity,” the policy says.
These policy frameworks have helped Google and OpenAI retain legal safeguards under Indian law, experts said.
Under Indian law, intermediaries must “make reasonable efforts” to prevent the propagation of “any information that belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right,” in order to avoid civil or criminal liability. The rules also require platforms to curb content that is “obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another’s privacy including bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on the basis of gender.”
Grok’s design: positioning or vulnerability?
Industry experts said Grok’s relatively relaxed approach to content moderation may be central to its positioning, but also its vulnerability.
“Compared with other platforms, Grok relaxes the constraints on all of these typical filters. While image manipulation is fundamental to generative AI, permissibility of usage from a policy standpoint is what sets Grok apart from Gemini or ChatGPT. Musk, Grok’s promoter, is a believer in absolute freedom of speech that the US is known for, while India offers freedom with guardrails and filters,” said Kashyap Kompella, veteran analyst and founder of technology consultancy firm, RPA2AI Research.
Kumar said that for X, doing both while retaining safe harbour protection is the key roadblock to overcome. “The biggest problem with Musk’s claim that we should focus enforcement on users who create illegal content is that misuse is difficult to identify and police at scale. If harmful uses are technically possible, bad actors will exploit them, and post-hoc enforcement will be ineffective."
"Platforms like Gemini and ChatGPT address this by embedding restrictions directly into system design, limiting certain user freedoms to reduce harm. This reflects a conscious trade-off between individual liberty and harm prevention,” he added.
“The episode raises the question whether India needs to rethink its regulatory framework to incentivise platforms to better design their services to minimise harm, rather than just maximize engagement,” Kumar said.
Kompella also said that Musk’s insistence on complying with local laws may contrast with his push to retain freedom of speech on X and Grok so far.
“With more governments globally flagging sexual content as not acceptable, also comes an additional issue that Musk’s platforms invest much less in content moderation than others such as Google and Meta. It now remains to be seen how far can X meet its illegal content moderation promise, with such dynamics.”