Secretaries of State Demand Action from Elon Musk Over AI Chatbot's Election Misinformation

WA elections chief joins complaint about false info from Musk chatbot Grok

Five secretaries of state plan to send an open letter to billionaire Elon Musk on Monday, urging him to "immediately implement changes" to X's AI chatbot Grok, after it shared with millions of users false information suggesting that Kamala Harris was not eligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot. The letter, spearheaded by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by his counterparts Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico, urges Musk to "immediately implement changes to X's AI search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year." Within hours of President Biden's announcement that he was suspending his presidential campaign on July 21, "false information on ballot deadlines produced by Grok was shared on multiple social media platforms," the secretaries wrote. The secretaries cited a post from Grok that circulated after Biden stepped out of the race: "The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election," the post read, naming nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. Had the deadlines passed in those states, the vice president would not have been able to replace Biden on the ballot. But the information was false. In all nine states, the ballot deadlines have not passed and upcoming ballot deadlines allow for changes to candidates. "This latest episode is unfortunate, but it's also an opportunity to deliver a collective warning about the need for action on behalf of America's voters," Simon said in a message to The Washington Post. "We are all united by the goal of ensuring that voters get accurate information -- and that they seek out trusted sources for such information." A message to X seeking comment from Musk, who controls X, was not immediately answered. Musk launched Grok last year as an anti-"woke" chatbot, professing to be frustrated by what he says is the liberal bias of ChatGPT. In contrast to AI tools built by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, which are trained to carefully navigate controversial topics, Musk said he wanted Grok to be unfiltered and "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems." The secretaries of state, who are the chief elections officers in their states, are objecting not to Grok's tone but its factual inaccuracies and the sluggishness of the company's move to correct bad information. Secretaries of state are grappling with an onslaught of AI-driven election misinformation, including deepfakes, ahead of the 2024 election. Simon testified on the subject before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee last year. Many of them are also still beating back the ramifications of widespread false conspiracy theories that plagued the last presidential election. The messages from Grok spurred a public conversation about whether Harris would be a legitimate candidate for president, even though she declared her candidacy well within the necessary state deadlines. Such false assertions are the kind of misinformation that helped fuel widespread beliefs in 2020 that the election was stolen from former president Donald Trump. Another version of Grok's false information about ballot deadlines included one telling users that ballots for the coming presidential election were already "locked and loaded." "So, if you're planning to run for president in any of these states, you might want to check if you've already missed the boat," the chatbot responded. "But hey, there's always 2028, right?" "It's important that social media companies, especially those with global reach, correct mistakes of their own making -- as in the case of the Grok AI chatbot simply getting the rules wrong," Simon added. "Speaking out now will hopefully reduce the risk that any social media company will decline or delay correction of its own mistakes between now and the November election." Grok is available only to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers, but the false information about ballot deadlines was "shared repeatedly in multiple posts - reaching millions of people," the letter read. Grok repeated false information for more than a week until it was corrected on July 31. Simon expressed disappointment in the way X initially responded to the error. He said that the company's response was "the equivalent of a shoulder shrug. Dismissive and detached." Simon reached out to his counterparts in all nine states mentioned in the Grok messages, but only four others agreed to sign the letter. All the signatories are Democrats, except for Schmidt of Pennsylvania, a Republican who is an appointee of Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat and a top candidate to be Harris's running mate. The secretaries noted that this year, OpenAI partnered with the National Association of Secretaries of State to give voters correct election information, and ChatGPT has been programmed to direct users to CanIVote.org -- a nonpartisan resource from professional election administrators of both major parties. Grok has entered into no such partnerships. "We urge X to immediately adopt a policy of directing Grok users to CanIVote.org when asked about elections in the U.S.," the letter concluded. "This issue underlines the importance of checking with trusted sources of election information, such as your state or local election officials to get accurate information about the election process," Toulouse Oliver said in a text message. "We do hope that X is able to address the issue with Grok reiterating this false information and hope that this can be prevented in the future." Benson confirmed her involvement in the letter-writing campaign. Spokespeople for the secretaries of state in Ohio and Indiana confirmed that they did not add their signatures to the letter. Representatives for those same offices in Alabama and Texas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Benson also confirmed that she had launched an investigation into a Musk-backed PAC, called the America PAC, which is supporting Trump. The investigation was first reported by CNBC. Benson's concern is the detailed voter information that the PAC collected from people living in Michigan and other battleground states through a section of the website that says "register to vote." When users in battleground states such as Michigan click on the "register to vote" tab on America PAC's website, they can submit personal information but are not given a form to complete voter registration, CNBC reported. That contrasts with the experience of users in states that are not considered politically competitive, such as Wyoming or California. Those users can enter their email address and Zip code but are then directed to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign-up section, according to CNBC. Simon said that Musk's AI chatbot cannot make the argument that it is simply facilitating different voices in the modern-day public square. "This is a case where the owner of the public square (the social media company itself) is the one who introduced and spread the bad information - and then delayed correcting its own mistake after it knew that the information was false," he said.

Elon Musk under pressure to stop X's AI feature from spreading false election information about Kamala Harris

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. In reality, the deadline had not passed in any of the states. If it had, Harris could not have taken Biden's place on the ballot. Steve Simon, the secretary of state in Minnesota, led the effort to write the letter, the Washington Post reported. Though he reached out to his counterparts in all nine states, only four others signed on, including Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan, and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico. Apart from Schmidt, all of the signatories are Democrats. Together, they represent 37 million constituents. Only Premium and Premium+ subscribers can access Grok, but X users shared the false information in various posts, meaning that it reached millions of people. Grok continued to spread the information for one week. In a statement to the Post, Simon likened X's response to the error to a "shoulder shrug. Dismissive and detached." To address the issue, the secretaries urged Musk to "immediately adopt a policy of directing Grok users to CanIVote.org when asked about elections in the U.S." OpenAI, the company that runs ChatGPT, sends users to the nonpartisan website when they ask election-related questions. Musk said he created Grok last year as an anti-woke AI Chatbot and antidote to what he sees as other chatbots' liberal slants. He has shared false information on X himself and recently came under fire for posting a deepfake video of Harris. This election, Musk and other Silicon Valley stars have become more vocal in their support for Donald Trump and JD Vance, once a venture capitalist himself. So far, Musk has not addressed the most recent controversy.

Elon Musk's AI chatbot called out for spreading fake election news

Five of the U.S.'s top election [elected?] officials on Monday asked X owner and chief technical officer Elon Musk to ensure his artificial intelligence chatbot stuck to the facts after it spread false information regarding Vice President Kamala Harris. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon sent Musk a letter Monday calling for X to "immediately" make changes to X's Grok chatbot to prevent election-related misinformation from confusing voters. Simon was joined by his counterparts in New Mexico, Michigan, Washington, and Pennsylvania, who co-signed the letter and collectively oversee 37 million constituents. "As tens of millions of voters in the U.S. seek basic information about voting in this major election year, X has the responsibility to ensure all voters using your platform have access to guidance that reflects true and accurate information about their constitutional right to vote," the officials state in the letter. The letter comes in response to false information provided by Grok in the aftermath of President Joe Biden's decision to drop his re-election campaign on July 21 and endorsed Harris as the Democratic nominee. Within hours of his announcement, Grok generated a post that informed users that the ballot deadline for at least nine states had passed, meaning that he cannot be replaced as the Democratic party's pick. However, that information was completely inaccurate and ballots in each of the nine states mentioned were not closed; in fact, it had not passed in any states as of July 30, Reuters reported. All five states represented by the officials who signed the letter were mentioned by Grok as having closed ballots. Although the secretaries of state note that only X Premium and Premium+ subscribers have access to Grok, that information can be shared by users that pay for access to the chatbot. "Millions of people" have seen the false information, which was repeated for more than a week without correction, according to the letter. One remedy suggested by the secretaries of state is that, when users ask to see election-related information, they are directed to CanIVote.org, a website hosted by the National Association of Secretaries of State. OpenAI's ChatGPT has already partnered with the association. Grok was created by Musk's AI startup xAI, and launched on X in April. The chatbot's AI news summaries replace X's trending section for paying users. Although Musk has called the bot "anti-woke" and promised it will be "truth-seeking" and unfiltered, it's run into issues for spreading fake information. Grok has been wrong about everything from a solar eclipse to New York City Mayor Eric Adams supposedly sending 50,000 police officers into the city's subway. It also cited parody news website The Onion for a post following the death of football player O.J. Simpson. On the more harmful side, Grok has claimed that the individual who attempted to assassinate former president Donald Trump was a member of Antifa, a loose network of far-left individuals, and that Harris was the one who was actually shot. Each of Grok's headlines and summaries are accompanied by a small disclaimer, which says, "This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs."

WA sec of state warns of election misinformation, asks X's Musk for fix

OLYMPIA -- Washington's secretary of state joined counterparts from four other states to ask Elon Musk, owner of the social media platform X, to update the site's AI search assistant to direct users to legitimate information about the election. The letter comes a day before voting in Washington's primary closes. The platform's AI search assistant, Grok, generated false information about ballot deadlines in Washington and eight other states that was shared on social media, the Washington Secretary of State's Office said. Late last month, Musk posted a video of Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, that appeared to have been manipulated. "If the owner of a social media platform themself is going to share misleading material, it signals to the rest of us that other materials allowed there may not be trustworthy," said Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. Hobbs and the secretaries of state from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Pennsylvania are asking that Grok direct voters seeking information about elections to CanIVote.org, a nonpartisan site created by state elections officials to show eligible voters how and where they can vote. The administrators of ChatGPT and OpenAI already send people searching for information about the election to the site, Hobbs' office said. Washington voters face a Tuesday deadline at 8 p.m. to turn in their ballots for the state's primary election. Hobbs said he was concerned about "a deluge of manipulated and false information" on social media and urged Washington voters to seek out "trusted information sources," including established news outlets and official government institutions. Voters can get information about the election from the Secretary of State's elections website and county election offices. "Artificial intelligence is getting easier and cheaper to manipulate for a broad number of malicious actors," he said. "The rest of us must be careful to verify what we see before we take it to heart." Misinformation about elections is one aspect of the growing concern about the risks of generative artificial intelligence, and Hobbs' office says that deepfakes have already made their way into state and local elections in the U.S. A deepfake video falsely asserted the governor of Utah had been involved in signature-gathering fraud, fake videos of Harris and President Joe Biden were circulated earlier this summer, and during the presidential primary, a deepfake robocall of Biden that made the rounds was intended to discourage New Hampshire voters from participating. Last year, Hobbs requested, and the Legislature passed a bill that created guardrails around the use of deepfakes in political campaigning, requiring disclosures on manipulated videos and allowing candidates targeted by deepfakes that weren't disclosed as such to sue for damages. Three-quarters of Washington voters are either very or somewhat concerned about the creation and distribution of deepfakes and rumors in the 2024 election, according to a recent poll commissioned by The Seattle Times in partnership with KING 5 and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. Fifty-seven percent of registered voters said social media platforms should restrict accounts or content that share rumors, conspiracy theories or misleading information that could undermine trust in voting in U.S. elections. The poll of 801 registered voters was conducted between July 10 and 13 and has a credibility interval of 4.6-4.7 percentage points.