Five secretaries of the state call out Elon Musk for instigating misinformation, urging immediate changes to the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Grok, in an open letter.
The letter was led by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by other officials, including Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan, and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico. The five officials urge him to “immediately implement changes to X’s artificial intelligence search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.”
The letter speaks over the incident last month, on July 21, hours after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, recalling how Grok gave out false information and claiming Harris missed the ballot deadline in nine states.
“The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” the chatbot stated in one of its replies. It also described the election as “locked and loaded” and advised, “So, if you’re planning to run for president in any of these states, you might want to check if you’ve already missed the boat. But hey, there’s always 2028, right?”
The news spread across the platform, reaching millions of users on X before the correction on July 31, ultimately coming to the attention of the secretaries.
“This is false. In all nine states, the opposite is true: The ballots are not closed, and upcoming ballot deadlines would allow for changes to candidates listed on the ballot for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States,” the letter says.
The sluggish response to the rampant misinformation could partly be a consequence of the reduced workforce after Musk dismissed 80% of the engineers at X responsible for trust and safety.
In his statement, Simon views the “unfortunate” incident as a chance to alert American voters and to rally together with the aim of guaranteeing that voters receive correct information and that they turn to reliable sources for it.
Oliver also added in a text message, “This issue underlines the importance of checking with trusted sources of election information, such as your state or local election officials, to get accurate information about the election process.”
This was not the first time Grok went under fiery scrutiny over inaccuracies in its responses. The chatbot also gave conflicting information regarding the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, a candidate that Musk actively promotes on his social media accounts.
Musk first introduced the chatbot Grok on the social media platform X. It was advertised as anti-“woke” and “having a sense of humor.” Grok was built in contrast to popular commercial chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, where critical news gets filtered responses or related questions get straight-up rejected.
In its concluding statement, the letter urged X to promptly adopt a policy that directs Grok users to CanIVote.org for inquiries regarding U.S. elections.
