Kate O'Flaherty , Wired; What You Need to Know About Grok AI and Your Privacy
"Described as “an AI search assistant with a twist of humor and a dash of rebellion,” Grok is designed to have fewer guardrails than its major competitors. Unsurprisingly, Grok is prone to hallucinations and bias, with the AI assistant blamed for spreading misinformation about the 2024 election."
Ryan Grenoble , HuffPost; Mark Cuban Fact-Checks Unhinged Elon Musk Conspiracy Theory Using Musk's Own Tech
"Elon Musk on Sunday embraced a racist and wildly conspiratorial election theory ― only to get fact-checked by fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, who used Musk’s own AI chatbot to do the job.
Musk, who’s endorsed Donald Trump and was once rumored to be donating $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC, claimed Sunday that the former president “is the only way to save” democracy from immigrants.
“Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election,” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform that’s lost nearly 80% of its value since he took over.
He then asserted, without any evidence, that Democrats are flying immigrants “directly into swing states” who are then “fast-tracked to citizenship” for the purpose of altering the outcome of the election.
The claim is false.
Noncitizens must first spend at least five years as a lawful permanent resident before they’re typically eligible for naturalization, meaning Musk’s conspiracy would have had to begin during the Trump administration to bear any meaningful fruit. (The median number of years in the U.S. for citizens naturalized in 2023 was actually longer: seven years.)
And according to the Department of Homeland Security, the top 10 states where people who were naturalized last year reside are: California (not a swing state), Texas (not a swing state), Florida (not really), New York (absolutely not), New Jersey (also solidly blue), Illinois (nuh-uh), Washington (try again), Pennsylvania (the only one), Massachusetts (blue) and Virginia (debatable).
Nine-tenths of those are not swing states. Pennsylvania, the lone exception, only accounted for 2.8% of those naturalized in 2023. More than 50% live in California, Texas, Florida and New York.
Undeterred by facts, Musk predicted that, if Trump loses, “there will be no more swing states” and “Democracy is over.” (Relatedly, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both separately deported more people than Donald Trump.)
Musk’s rant also caught the eye of Mark Cuban, who fact-checked Musk using Twitter’s own “anti-woke” AI chatbot Grok, which Musk concocted after finding competitors were too politically liberal.
“Hey [Elon Musk], truly appreciate the work you have done with [Grok].” Cuban wrote to Musk in a public message. “It’s a great way to factcheck you.”
Cuban then shared a link to Grok’s lengthy analysis of Musk’s claim.
The chatbot concluded that Musk’s xenophobic theory “contains exaggerated claims and speculative fears rather than factual analysis,” and was “presented in an alarmist and overly deterministic manner.”
Rachel Leingang, The Guardian; X’s AI chatbot spread voter misinformation – and election officials fought back
"Finding the source – and working to correct it – served as a test case of how election officials and artificial intelligence companies will interact during the 2024 presidential election in the US amid fears that AI could mislead or distract voters. And it showed the role Grok, specifically, could play in the election, as a chatbot with fewer guardrails to prevent the generating of more inflammatory content.
A group of secretaries of state and the organization that represents them, the National Association of Secretaries of State, contacted Grok and X to flag the misinformation. But the company didn’t work to correct it immediately, instead giving the equivalent of a shoulder shrug, said Steve Simon, the Minnesota secretary of state. “And that struck, I think it’s fair to say all of us, as really the wrong response,” he said.
Thankfully, this wrong answer was relatively low-stakes: it would not have prevented people from casting a ballot. But the secretaries took a strong position quickly because of what could come next.
“In our minds, we thought, well, what if the next time Grok makes a mistake, it is higher stakes?” Simon said. “What if the next time the answer it gets wrong is, can I vote, where do I vote … what are the hours, or can I vote absentee? So this was alarming to us.”
Especially troubling was the fact that the social media platform itself was spreading false information, rather than users spreading misinformation using the platform.
The secretaries took their effort public. Five of the nine secretaries in the group signed on to a public letter to the platform and its owner, Elon Musk. The letter called on X to have its chatbot take a similar position as other chatbot tools, like ChatGPT, and direct users who ask Grok election-related questions to a trusted nonpartisan voting information site, CanIVote.org.
The effort worked. Grok now directs users to a different website, vote.gov, when asked about elections."
Five secretaries of state sent a letter to Elon Musk Monday imploring him to fix X's AI chatbot after it shared misinformation about the 2024 presidential election.
Why it matters: Experts have long warned about the threat of AI-driven misinformation, which is more salient than ever as the election heats up and voters are susceptible to lies about the candidates or voting process.
Driving the news: Secretaries of state from Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, Michigan and New Mexico told Musk that X's AI chatbot, Grok, had produced and circulated "false information on ballot deadlines" shortly after President Biden withdrew from the 2024 race, according to the letter, obtained by Axios.
