Elon Musk Urged to Fix X's Grok AI Tendency for Political Disinformation

Elon Musk is now being urged to fix X's (formerly Twitter) AI chatbot, Grok, and its vulnerability to hallucinate inaccurate political information when the 2024 US Elections are only a few months away.

Five secretaries of the state sent a letter to the X owner on Monday, demanding the platform and Musk to "immediately implement changes" on the AI assistant "to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year."

The letter cited previously reported cases of the chatbot generating inaccurate news briefs about President Joe Biden stepping down from his presidential candidacy, just within hours after the announcement.

The Wall Street Journal has also noted the chatbot of "hallucinating" information about the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump, another presidential candidate when most information remained uncertain.

State Secretaries Urge Musk, X to Partner with Election Bodies to Prevent Political Misinformation

The letter urged the platform's chatbot to partner with the nonpartisan resource center for American voters, CanIVote.org, to ensure accurate and responsible information dissemination ahead of the voting polls.

CanIVote.org is the same voter registration site OpenAI's ChatGPT has previously partnered with after the AI firm collaborated with the National Association of Secretaries of State for "accurate, up-to-date elections information" when using AI tools.

Among the signatories are the state secretaries of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Washington, and New Mexico.

X and Musk have yet to issue a statement regarding the matter.

Political Disinformation Surges Across X During Election Period

X has recently been seeing an increase in political disinformation as election discussions become the highlight of the platform.

Most notable is the increase of right-wing content, conspiracy theories, and disinformation campaigns reported, seemingly evading the platform's anti-misinformation policies.

Even the platform's ringleader, Musk, has been repeatedly called out for spreading political disinformation and smear campaigns against presidential candidates, especially after declaring support for Trump.

Musk earlier faced criticisms after sharing a deepfaked political ad of the Democrat Party's presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, supposedly calling herself the "ultimate diversity hire."

The X video has earned well over 134.7 million views, 932,000 likes, and more than 245,000 shares.

Coincidentally, the post never received any "Community Notes" or other platform labels indicating that the video was digitally manipulated.