The Philippines will reinstate access to Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot after its developer agreed to remove deepfake and pornographic content generation features for the local market.
MANILA: The Philippines will end its short-lived ban on Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot.
The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) announced the reversal on Wednesday, less than a week after the initial block.
The decision follows an agreement with developer xAI to modify the tool for the local market.
The company pledged to eliminate the chatbot’s ability to create “pornographic content” and deepfakes.
“The Grok AI app has reached out to us and stated that its platform will no longer use any content manipulation,” CICC undersecretary Renato Paraiso said in a statement.
The changes will also include the “total exclusion of pornographic content, particularly child sexual abuse material.”
A formal meeting with xAI will determine a timeline for the tool’s reinstatement.
The Philippines had blocked the chatbot on January 15, becoming the third Southeast Asian nation to do so after Indonesia and Malaysia.
The ban was imposed over concerns about the tool’s ability to generate sexualised deepfakes.
Last week, Musk’s platform X announced it would “geoblock the ability” to create images of people in revealing attire in jurisdictions where it is illegal.
This move followed an investigation by California’s attorney general into xAI over sexually explicit material.
At a briefing last Thursday, Philippine telecommunications secretary Henry Rhoel Aguda defended the initial ban.
He stated the government needed to “clean the internet now, because much toxic content is appearing, especially with the advent of AI.”
