Grok (not to be confused with the homophone-named AI startup Groq, which raised more than $600 million this morning) is spreading misinformation about Vice President Kamala Harris on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.
This comes according to an open letter written by five secretaries of state to Tesla, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk, alleging that X's AI-powered chatbot falsely suggested Ms Harris was ineligible to appear on some ballots in the 2024 US presidential election.
The letter, led by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by Secretaries of State Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico, calls on Musk to “make immediate changes to Grok, X's AI search assistant, to ensure voters have accurate information during this critical election year.”
On July 21, hours after President Joe Biden announced he was ending his presidential bid, Glock began answering questions about Harris' qualifications, misleadingly claiming that voting deadlines had passed in nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington.
In fact, the deadline for voting had not yet passed, but the letter said Grok's misinformation had spread far and wide, reaching millions of users on X and other platforms before it was corrected on July 31.
“Although Grok is only available to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers and contains a disclaimer urging users to verify the information, misinformation about the voting deadline has been repeatedly captured and shared in multiple posts,” the secretaries of state wrote.
Musk has come under fire for the way X moderated the political discussion and for adding fuel to the fire.
The data shows that X has significantly fewer moderation staff than other platforms, in part because Musk cut about 80% of the company's engineers working on reliability and safety. Earlier this year, X promised to open a new center of excellence for reliability and safety in Austin, Texas. But Bloomberg reported that the company has hired far fewer moderators for the center than it originally planned.
Musk is not exactly a model fact-checker.
The CEO reshared a video last Friday that appeared to violate the platform's guidelines, using AI to replicate Harris' voice to make it appear as though she endorsed “diversity hiring” and said she “knows nothing about running a country.” The billionaire then responded to riots across the UK last week over the murder of three young girls and the spread of misinformation about the perpetrator by posting that “civil war is inevitable,” drawing sharp criticism from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.