New Delhi, Jan. 7 -- The Union government on Tuesday gave a 48-hour extension to X Corp to submit a detailed compliance report on action taken to prevent its Grok AI chatbot from generating obscene and sexually explicit content, a senior official told HT. On Friday, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) had given X (formerly Twitter) 72 hours to respond to the misuse of Grok AI on its platform. The Elon Musk-owned microblogging platform now has time till January 7, 5pm to respond to MeitY's letter. The ministry had, on January 2, written a strongly worded letter to X flagging what it called serious failures in preventing obscene and sexually explicit content generated using its AI tool Grok, and warning that continued non-compliance could lead to the loss of legal protection under Indian law. The 48-hour extension was granted after X informed MeitY that its employees were on holiday, citing the two intervening public holidays - Christmas and New Year's - as the reason it needed additional time to respond. In the two days leading up to the January 2 letter, MeitY had been in discussions with X's compliance teams over Grok's responses to political and religious issues, HT reported first on January 3. These discussions, the person said, were not related to obscene or pornographic content, which is why MeitY's letter had taken X by surprise, the person quoted above had told HT. A meeting scheduled for January 3 did not take place after X requested that it be postponed. The letter, addressed to X's Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) for India Vinay Prakash, said, "It has especially been observed that the service namely 'Grok AI'. 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." It added that the abuse is not limited to fake accounts and also targets women who legitimately upload their own photos or videos, which are then manipulated through AI prompts and synthetic outputs. MeitY has directed X to submit a detailed Action Taken Report (ATR), which must spell out the technical measures taken for Grok, the role played by the CCO, action against offending users and content, and systems put in place to meet mandatory crime reporting requirements. The ministry warned that failure to comply could lead to loss of Section 79 immunity and "strict legal consequences" against the platform, its responsible officers and users, without further notice. The issuance of this letter also came after Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote a letter to MeitY minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on January 2 detailing how Grok generates sexualised images of women and urged the government to take up the matter with the platform. Separately at an event, Vaishnaw said, "Today social media is such a big influence in our society.they have to take responsibility for the content. The [parliamentary] standing committee [on communications and information technology] has very strongly recommended that there should be strong laws for making social media accountable." X did not immediately respond to HT's request for comment....