Musk AI Chatbot Under Fire for Sharing False Election Information

Lawmakers have written to Elon Musk calling for urgent updates to Grok after the AI chatbot shared disinformation about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on X.

A Grok post circulated on the social media platform Musk owns suggesting that deadlines for ballots had passed in several states, suggesting Harris could not have replaced President Biden after he stepped out of the race.

Lawmakers have raised concerns about the post, with five secretaries of state writing to Musk, demanding changes to the chatbot and its underlying model to prevent the spread of further misinformation, according to the Washington Post.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon is reportedly leading the effort, he’s joined by Pennsylvania’s Al Schmidt and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico calling on Musk to make changes to “ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.”

Simon said the Musk-owned social media platform responded to the post with “the equivalent of a shoulder shrug.”

It took a whole week for the post to be corrected, but not before it was fact-checked by Reuters. In reality, voters had until Aug 7 to confirm their vote — two weeks after Biden dropped out of the race.

Grok is only available to Premium subscribers on X. It’s designed to be more provocative than OpenAI’s ChatGPT, responding with more edge due to fewer safeguards impacting its responses.

Related:Musk Confirms Grok 2 Coming in August, Grok 3 by End of the Year

While limited to X subscribers, the Grok post was “shared repeatedly in multiple posts, reaching millions of people.”

“It’s important that social media companies, especially those with global reach, correct mistakes of their own making, as in the case of the Grok AI chatbot simply getting the rules wrong,” Simon’s letter read. “Speaking out now will hopefully reduce the risk that any social media company will decline or delay correction of its own mistakes between now and the November election.”

Other AI chatbot providers have sought to shore up their systems ahead of the presidential election. Rival OpenAI, for example, has implemented guardrails to prevent the spread of misinformation, including restricting image generation of political figures.

X and Grok developers xAI have not implemented any such restrictions. The lawmakers have called on the chatbot’s providers to “immediately adopt a policy of directing Grok users to CanIVote.org when asked about elections in the U.S.”

It’s well-documented that Musk is a GOP supporter. He recently launched the America PAC to support Donald Trump's re-election efforts.

Related:AI Poses Threat to Presidential Election Warns FBI, Department of Justice

Michigan state secretary Jocelyn Benson, who signed the letter, announced last week she was investigating Musk’s super PAC over claims its website takes personal information without a consent form.