It appears like Elon Musk’s X is again making headlines for all the wrong reasons. And when you’ve got the US Secretaries of five states involved, you know that things are serious.
An open letter was recently penned to the tech billionaire and X owner about how Grok is on a mission to spread misinformation about the US elections. This news comes after the AI-powered chatbot claimed VP Kamala Harris was ineligible to appear on American Presidential ballots in some locations.
As you can imagine, the accusation is severe and it’s been slammed by the Secretaries of State from Washington, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, and New Mexico. They want it made clear to Musk that this shouldn’t be happening and now that it is, it must be altered immediately so the American voters have the right information at hand for this year’s pivotal election period.
The news relates to the period during which Biden made the crucial announcement to the world that he would be withdrawing from the upcoming presidential race and suspending his bid. Furthermore, he alerted the nation that he was endorsing VP Kamala Harris as the next nominee and hoped she would do a great job at running the country and representing his party.
Image: DIW-Aigen
On that note, Grok was bombarded with questions from users about eligibility Harris had and how many misleading claims were made regarding deadlines that had already passed in terms of balloting.
It was later confirmed that that was not true. The misinformation spread was really reaching a new level and millions of users on X were getting impacted by this before it underwent a correction on the last day of the month as confirmed in this letter.
While Grok is only up for grabs to subscribers having the Premium and Premium + accounts, another disclaimer was spoken about including how users had to verify the data. Still, officials felt that despite all of these checkpoints in place, seeing false information arise and get shared was alarming.
This is the reason why Musk is coming under pressure from political officials for not handling the situation and ensuring the right moderation is in place, especially regarding sensitive topics.
The information further goes on to speak about how X has less moderation staff than other apps seen today and a reason for that is related to Musk reducing his workforce by nearly 80%. And most of them were engineers linked to the platform’s trust and safety sector.
During the start of 2024, we saw Musk vow to put out the best trust and safety center in Texas. However, things didn’t go as planned and we saw the firm hire fewer moderators for this project than it had planned as per reports from Bloomberg.
Musk is never known for great fact-checking on the app. And this letter is another proof of that.
Recently, he was seen resharing content that went against his app’s own rules. It made use of AI tech to clone Harris’ voice, appearing as if she was admitting to being hired only for her diversity and claiming that she’s got zero clue about how to run the nation.
He then went about posting about how a civil war was inevitable after protests in the UK got out of control after three young girls were murdered and hence, misinformation started to spread regarding the true perpetrator. This prompted the UK’s PM to roll out a sharp condemnation statement after the incident to try and calm things down.
Read next: Apple’s Safari Rolls Out Handy Distraction Control Feature For Websites
An open letter was recently penned to the tech billionaire and X owner about how Grok is on a mission to spread misinformation about the US elections. This news comes after the AI-powered chatbot claimed VP Kamala Harris was ineligible to appear on American Presidential ballots in some locations.
As you can imagine, the accusation is severe and it’s been slammed by the Secretaries of State from Washington, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, and New Mexico. They want it made clear to Musk that this shouldn’t be happening and now that it is, it must be altered immediately so the American voters have the right information at hand for this year’s pivotal election period.
The news relates to the period during which Biden made the crucial announcement to the world that he would be withdrawing from the upcoming presidential race and suspending his bid. Furthermore, he alerted the nation that he was endorsing VP Kamala Harris as the next nominee and hoped she would do a great job at running the country and representing his party.
On that note, Grok was bombarded with questions from users about eligibility Harris had and how many misleading claims were made regarding deadlines that had already passed in terms of balloting.
It was later confirmed that that was not true. The misinformation spread was really reaching a new level and millions of users on X were getting impacted by this before it underwent a correction on the last day of the month as confirmed in this letter.
While Grok is only up for grabs to subscribers having the Premium and Premium + accounts, another disclaimer was spoken about including how users had to verify the data. Still, officials felt that despite all of these checkpoints in place, seeing false information arise and get shared was alarming.
This is the reason why Musk is coming under pressure from political officials for not handling the situation and ensuring the right moderation is in place, especially regarding sensitive topics.
The information further goes on to speak about how X has less moderation staff than other apps seen today and a reason for that is related to Musk reducing his workforce by nearly 80%. And most of them were engineers linked to the platform’s trust and safety sector.
During the start of 2024, we saw Musk vow to put out the best trust and safety center in Texas. However, things didn’t go as planned and we saw the firm hire fewer moderators for this project than it had planned as per reports from Bloomberg.
Musk is never known for great fact-checking on the app. And this letter is another proof of that.
Recently, he was seen resharing content that went against his app’s own rules. It made use of AI tech to clone Harris’ voice, appearing as if she was admitting to being hired only for her diversity and claiming that she’s got zero clue about how to run the nation.
He then went about posting about how a civil war was inevitable after protests in the UK got out of control after three young girls were murdered and hence, misinformation started to spread regarding the true perpetrator. This prompted the UK’s PM to roll out a sharp condemnation statement after the incident to try and calm things down.
Read next: Apple’s Safari Rolls Out Handy Distraction Control Feature For Websites
