Elon Musk's X Gets 48-Hour Extension From India To File Action Report On Vulgar, Obscene Content

(MENAFN- Live Mint) The central government on Tuesday, 6 January, extended the deadline it had given to Elon Musk's X Corporation to file a detailed action taken report (ATR) regarding“vulgar and unlawful” content, users and accounts on its platform. With the extension of the deadline, X now has time until 7 January, 5 PM to file a report on the action it took to prevent misuse of its bot, GrokAI, a senior official told Hindustan Times.

The deadline extension comes three days after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) wrote to X (formerly Twitter), alleging failure to“observe statutory due diligence obligations” under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and demanded a detailed report on the ation taken to prevent hosting, generation and uploading of obscene, nude, indecent and sexually explicit content through 'Grok' and xAI's other services.

In a letter to the Chief Compliance Officer, X Corp, India Operations, MeitY advised the social media platform to strictly desist from the hosting, displaying, uploading, publication, transmission, storage, and sharing of any content that is obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, paedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under any law for the time being in force in any manner whatsoever.

It added that hosting, displaying, uploading, publication, transmission, storage, and sharing of vulgar and unlawful content“attracts serious penal consequences under multiple statutes”.

Also Read | Why Elon Musk's Grok is under investigation in India, Europe and Malaysia: what are the cases?

“Failure to observe such due diligence obligations shall result in the loss of the exemption from liability under section 79 of the IT Act, and you shall also be liable for consequential action as provided under any law including the IT Act and BNS,” the letter read.

It continued: "It has especially been observed that the service namely "Grok AI" developed by you and integrated and made available on the X platform, 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 in order to indecently denigrate them."

What was X asked to do by MeitY?

In its letter, the central government asked X to carry out a "technical, procedural and governance-level review of the AI-based application, Grok, to ensure that there is no content that promotes nudity and other unlawful activities in any form.

It also asked X to update its terms of service and other related policies against those violating the rules and submit a detailed action report in at least 72 hours covering“specific technical and organisational measures adopted or proposed in relation to the Grok application; role and oversight exercised by the Chief Compliance Officer; actions taken against offending content, users and accounts; and mechanisms put in place to ensure compliance with the mandatory reporting requirement under section 33 of the BNSS”.

On Sunday, 4 January, Global Government Affairs account of X said in a statement that the social media platform will act against content that violates their policies, suspending accounts that post unlawful material, and work with the local governments.

“Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” Musk had said.

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