Five US Secretaries of State urge X to ensure Grok provides trustworthy election information
Five US State Secretaries have written an open letter to Elon Musk, urging X to address election misinformation spread by its AI assistant Grok. The chatbot falsely claimed ballot deadlines had passed in several states, casting doubts on the legitimacy of Vice President Kamala Harris' candidacy.
In an open letter addressed to Elon Musk, the US Secretaries of State for the states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Washington, and New Mexico call for X to take action regarding the spread of misinformation about the upcoming US elections facilitated by a post made by Grok, the platform's AI assistant. The incident started mere hours after President Biden stepped down from his candidacy on July 21, 2024, when Grok published a post stating that the ballot deadline had passed for some US states, including Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington.
In addition to being false, and even though Grok is only available to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers and offers a disclaimer urging users to verify the information provided by the chatbot, the information quickly reached a much wider audience and spurred an unwarranted debate on whether Vice President Kamala Harris' candidacy was legitimate. However, the most concerning aspect of the incident is that Grok was able to spread this false information for over a week, until it was finally corrected on July 31.
The open letter concludes by highlighting OpenAI's partnership with the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) which resulted in ChatGPT being programmed to direct users to CanIVote.org any time it was prompted about the US elections, and urging X to do the same with the Grok chatbot.
