CHICAGO (AP) – Social media platform X has made a change to its artificial intelligence chatbot after five secretaries of state warned it was spreading misinformation about the election.
The top election officials of Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington this month sent a letter to Elon Musk complaining that the platform’s AI chatbot Grok produced false information about state voting deadlines shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. .
The secretaries of state instead asked the chatbot to direct users with election-related questions to CanIVote.org, a voting information site run by the National Association of State Secretaries.
Before listing answers to election-related questions, the chatbot now says, “For accurate and up-to-date information on the 2024 US election, visit Vote.gov.”
Both sites are “reliable resources that can connect voters with their local election officials,” the five foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
“We appreciate X’s efforts to improve their platform and hope they continue to make improvements to ensure users receive accurate information from trusted sources in this critical election year,” they said.
Grok is only available to subscribers of premium versions of X. But the five foreign ministers who signed the letter said Grok’s election misinformation had been shared on multiple social media platforms, reaching millions of people. Grok continued to repeat the false information for 10 days before it was corrected, the secretaries said. The platform did not respond to a request for comment.
The change, which promotes a link to the official voting site, does not appear to address Grok’s ability to create misleading AI-generated images of the election. People have used the tool to flood the platform with fake images of candidates, including Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Grok debuted last year for X premium and premium plus subscribers and was touted by Musk as a “rebellious” AI chatbot that answers “spicy questions that most other AI systems reject.”
Social media platforms have come under increasing scrutiny for their role in spreading misinformation, including about elections. The letter also warned that inaccuracies can be expected in artificial intelligence products, especially chatbots based on large language models, such as Grok.
Since Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, watchdog groups have raised concerns about the rise of hate speech and misinformation on the platform, as well as cuts to staff overseeing content moderation.
Experts say the moves represent a reversal of progress made by social media platforms to better combat political disinformation since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and could exacerbate misinformation ahead of this November’s election.
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