Five US states push Musk to fix AI chatbot over election misinformation

[August 06, 2024]  By Kanishka Singh and Chandni Shah
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretaries of state from five U.S. states urged billionaire Elon Musk on Monday to fix social media platform X's AI chatbot, saying it had spread misinformation related to the Nov. 5 election.   

Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024. REUTERS/David Swanson/File Photo

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Social media platforms, including X, have been under scrutiny for years over the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, including false information about elections and vaccines. There has been growing concern in Washington that AI-generated content could mislead voters in the November presidential and congressional elections.

Since Musk bought the platform formerly called Twitter in 2022, civil rights groups have raised concerns over a rise in hate speech and misinformation due to reduced content moderation.

Musk, who last month endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, himself has been accused of spreading misinformation. For example, he has said, without evidence, that Democrats are allowing migrants to cross the southern border so that they can vote in federal elections, even though they are ineligible to do so.

KEY QUOTES

"As Secretaries of State whose offices and 37 million constituents were recently impacted by false information provided by your platform, we are calling on you to immediately implement changes to X's AI search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year," the officials from Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, Michigan and New Mexico said in an open letter to Musk.

After Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden stepped aside as presidential candidate on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, the chatbot, Grok, falsely told social media users that Harris had missed the ballot deadline in nine states.

"This is false. In all nine states the opposite is true," the letter from the secretaries of state added.

CONTEXT

Musk said in March that Grok - a chatbot from artificial intelligence startup xAI - would be enabled for all premium subscribers of X.

The officials said in their letter that even though the chatbot is only available to premium users, its misinformation was shared with millions of people on social media.

The officials said that X should direct Grok users to CanIVote.org, a nonpartisan website on U.S. voting information, when asked about U.S. elections.

The social media platform did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Chandni Shah, editing by Deepa Babington)

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