Grok, distinct from the similarly named AI startup Groq, which raised over $600 million this morning, has been disseminating false information about Vice President Kamala Harris on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter
According to an open letter written by five secretaries of state and addressed to Tesla, SpaceX, and X CEO Elon Musk, the AI-powered chatbot of X incorrectly implied that Harris is ineligible to appear on certain 2024 U.S. presidential ballots.
Steve Simon, Minnesota Secretary of State, spearheaded the letter, signed by his counterparts Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan, and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico.
The letter urges Musk to “immediately implement changes to X’s AI search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.”
Grok began responding to inquiries regarding Harris’ eligibility on July 21, only hours after President Joe Biden announced that he would suspend his presidential campaign.
He made the deceptive assertion that the ballot deadlines had expired in nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington.
The ballot deadlines had not expired. However, Grok’s misinformation was disseminated widely, reaching millions of users on X and beyond, before it was rectified on July 31, as indicated in the letter.
“The secretaries of state wrote that the false information regarding ballot deadlines has been captured and shared repeatedly in multiple posts, even though Grok is exclusively available to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers and includes a disclaimer urging users to verify the information.”
Musk has been criticized for his role in fueling the flames and for how X has moderated political topics.
The data indicates that X has a substantially lower number of moderation staff than other platforms, partially due to Musk’s decision to eliminate an estimated 80% of the company’s engineers dedicated to trust and safety.
X committed to establishing a new trust and safety center of excellence in Austin, Texas, earlier this year. Bloomberg reports that the company ultimately hired significantly fewer moderators for the center than anticipated.
Musk has not exactly been the embodiment of fact-checking.
In apparent violation of his platform’s guidelines, the CEO last Friday reshared a video that utilized AI to clone Harris’ voice, causing her to appear to confess to being a “diversity hire” and asserting that she “doesn’t know the first thing about running the country.”
In response to the riots in the United Kingdom that were triggered by the murder of three girls last week and the dissemination of misinformation about the perpetrator, the billionaire posted that “civil war is inevitable.”
This prompted the U.K.’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, to sharply condemn.
