Five secretaries of state plan to send a letter to Elon Musk asking the billionaire owner of Google X to make changes to the social media platform’s Grok AI chatbot after it provided users with misinformation about Kamala Harris’s appearance on the 2024 White House ticket in certain states.
Grok told users that ballots were “ready to vote” and that “the deadline to vote has already passed for several states.”
“So, if you’re thinking about running for president in any of these states, you might want to check to see if you’ve already missed the boat. But hey, there’s always 2028, right?” the chatbot told users.
But the voting deadlines in the nine states Grok listed — Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington — have not yet passed, and there will be no impediment to a vice president running in those states.
Secretaries of state in five of those states — Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington — are asking Musk to update Grok with accurate information about the presidential election, according to the Washington Post.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon stressed that misinformation has reached millions of X users.
“There is considerable scope for this misinformation here,” Simon told the Minneapolis Times. Star Tribune“It’s being repeated and shared over and over again. What else are we going to see on Grok? What else are we going to see on X that perpetuates misinformation?”
When he approached X with his concerns, Simon said he received “what I can only verbalize as the equivalent of a shrug.”
Simon told the Post that he reached out to other secretaries of state, who are in charge of administering elections, in the nine states mentioned by Grok. All five who agreed to sign the letter are Democrats, with the exception of Pennsylvania’s Al Schmidt, a Republican who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, a candidate for Harris’ running mate.
Grok was introduced last November as a feature for subscribers of X Premium and Premium Plus, whose plans cost $3 and $16 per month. Musk framed Grok is an alternative, “rogue” AI chatbot that will answer “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.”
In their letter, the secretaries of state mention that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, worked with the National Association of Secretaries of State to ensure the chatbot provides users with accurate voting information, directing them to CanIVote.org for more details.
In recent months, Musk has stepped up his support for Donald Trump, whom the billionaire has endorsed. While most tech billionaires remain silent on the election, Musk has thrown his weight behind a super political action committee, America PAC, which has run ads in support of the former president. Musk said the group supports “meritocracy and individual liberty.”
In one ad, which shows footage from the failed assassination attempt on Trump on July 13, users in key states who end up clicking on a “Register to Vote” link are taken to a page where they submit detailed information, including address, age and phone number, on a form that ultimately delivers their data to the America PAC, according to CNBC.
While Musk has said his vision for X, after acquiring it in 2022, was to turn it into a “public square,” Simon told the Post that spreading misinformation goes beyond moderating different voices in a public forum.
“This is a case where the owner of the public space (the social media company itself) is the one who introduced and spread the misinformation, and then delayed correcting its own mistake after learning the information was false,” he said.
