The government on Friday issued a stern notice to Elon Musk-led social media platform X to immediately remove all vulgar and unlawful content, especially generated by its AI app Grok, or face legal action.

The action follows Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi’s letter to information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in which she flagged how Grok was complying with user requests to digitally alter pictures of women and depict them as unclothed, partially clad or in a sexually compromised state.

The ministry of electronics and IT 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 the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) 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.

The ministry has sought an action-taken report towards immediate compliance for the prevention of hosting, generation, publication, transmission, sharing or uploading of obscene, nude, indecent and sexually explicit content through the misuse of AI-based services such as Grok.

“It is reiterated that non-compliance with the... requirements shall be viewed seriously and may result in strict legal consequences against your platform, its responsible officers and the users on the platform who violate the law, without any further notice, under the IT Act, the IT Rules, the BNSS, the BNS and other applicable laws,” the order added.

Sharing her letter to Vaishnaw on X, Chaturvedi had earlier in the day alleged that men were using fake profiles to post pictures of women and issuing prompts to Grok to “minimise their clothing and sexualise them”.

She said the trend was also targeting women who post their own pictures, raising serious concerns about women’s safety and privacy.

“Our country cannot be a bystander to women’s dignity being violated publicly and digitally with zero consequences under the garb of creativity and innovation,” she wrote in the letter.

“As a nation we must take this up on a priority to ensure that women are not the victims of such openly criminal practices and further silence and push them out of these platforms,” she added.