Grok — to not be confused with the homophone AI startup Groq, which raised over $600 million this morning — has been spreading false details about Vice President Kamala Harris on X, the social network formerly referred to as Twitter.
According to a open letter Written by five secretaries of state and addressed to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X, it alleges that X's AI-powered chatbot falsely suggested that Harris was ineligible to look on some 2024 U.S. presidential ballots.
The letter, initiated by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by his counterparts Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico, calls on Musk to “immediately make changes to X's AI search assistant Grok to make sure voters have accurate information in this significant election 12 months.”
On July 21, just hours after President Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing his presidential bid, Grok began responding to questions on Harris' eligibility by 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 to vote had not yet passed. But Grok's hoax spread far and wide, reaching tens of millions of users on X and beyond before it was corrected on July 31, in keeping with the letter.
“Although Grok is just available to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers and features a disclaimer asking users to substantiate the knowledge, the false information in regards to the election deadlines was picked up and shared repeatedly in multiple posts,” the foreign ministers wrote.
Musk has come under fire for his handling of X's moderation of political topics – and for adding fuel to the hearth himself.
The data suggest that X significant fewer moderators than other platforms, partly a Consequence by Musk, who fired an estimated 80% of the corporate's engineers working on trust and security. Earlier this 12 months, X promised to determine a brand new Center of Excellence for Trust and Safety in Austin, Texas. But the corporate ended up hiring far fewer moderators for the middle than originally planned. after in keeping with Bloomberg.
Musk wasn't exactly a model of fact-checking.
The CEO last Friday shared again a video that apparently violates his platform's policies and mimics Harris' voice using artificial intelligence to make it seem like she is admitting she is a “diversity employee” and saying she “doesn't know the very first thing about the way to run the country.” The billionaire Posted “Civil war is inevitable” was the response to the unrest across Britain sparked by the murder of three girls last week and the spread of misinformation in regards to the perpetrator. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer strongly condemned the unrest.
