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Elon Musk’s X platform has made a change to its AI assistant, Grok, that could potentially prevent users from being given incorrect information about election-related deadlines and other election-related matters. Going forward, X says, Grok will redirect users to Vote.gov when asked questions about elections.
X, formerly Twitter, made the change about two weeks after five secretaries of state filed a complaint with the company. “On August 21, 2024, X's head of U.S. and Canada Global Government Affairs informed the Minnesota Secretary of State's office [Steve Simon] that the platform has made changes to its AI search assistant Grok, following a request from several state secretaries,” Simons' office said in a press release yesterday.
Grok is being developed by xAI, one of Musk's other companies, and is available on X to paying subscribers.
Simon and the secretaries of state of Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Washington sent a letter to Musk about Grok on August 5. The letter noted that “within hours of President Joe Biden's renunciation of his candidacy for president on July 21, 2024, false information produced by Grok was shared across multiple social media platforms about voting deadlines.”
The fake Grok post said that the “voting deadline for several states for the 2024 election has passed” and listed nine states where the deadline had supposedly passed. “This is false. In all nine states, the opposite is true: the ballots are not closed and the upcoming voting deadlines would allow for changes to candidates on the ballot for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States,” the Aug. 5 letter said.
X took the time to correct the false post
Grok, which is also known for concocting fake news based on jokes from X users, continued to make false claims about the voting deadline until July 31. Grok “provided false information about election rules… and then delayed correcting its own error for 10 days, even after it learned that the information it had spread was false,” Simon's office said.
While that specific misinformation was eventually corrected, the foreign ministers told Musk that X should “immediately implement a policy of directing Grok users to CanIVote.org when asked about US elections.”
CanIVote.org redirects to a page maintained by the National Association of Secretaries of State. X will instead redirect users to Vote.gov, which is maintained by the U.S. government.
The secretaries of state said they are pleased with the change, as Vote.gov and CanIvote.org are both trusted sources. “We appreciate X's action to improve their platform and hope they continue to make improvements that ensure their users have access to accurate information from trusted sources during this critical election year,” the state officials said in a joint statement.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT was already programmed to direct users to CanIVote.org, their recent letter said. “As you know, inaccuracies are expected of all AI products, particularly chatbots based on large language models… As tens of millions of voters across the U.S. seek basic voting information in this important election year, X has a responsibility to ensure that all voters using your platform have access to guidance that reflects true and accurate information about their constitutional right to vote,” the state officials wrote to Musk.
