Turkish court orders ban on Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok for offensive content

Tesla and SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk attends the first plenary session on of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023 in Bletchley, England. (Leon Neal/Pool Photo via AP, File)

ANKARA, Turkiye — A Turkish court ordered Wednesday a ban on access to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok from Turkiye, after the platform allegedly disseminated content insulting to Turkiye’s president and others.

The chatbot, developed by Musk’s company xAI, posted vulgarities against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and personalities, while responding to users’ questions on the X social media platform, the pro-government A Haber news channel reported.

Offensive responses were also directed toward modern Turkiye’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, other media outlets said.

That prompted the Ankara public to file for the imposition of restrictions under Turkiye’s internet law, citing a threat to public order. A criminal court approved the request early on Wednesday, ordering the country’s telecommunications authority to enforce the ban.

The incident is part of a broader controversy surrounding a recent update to Grok, which resulted in more “politically incorrect” and unfiltered responses.

In response to mounting controversy, X said it was aware of the recent posts and had taken immediate action to remove inappropriate content.

“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the company said in a statement.

“xAI is training only truth-seeking, and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved,” it said.

The Associated Press