A bipartisan group of lawmakers is reportedly demanding solutions from right-wing billionaire Elon Musk after his AI chatbot, Grok, repeatedly parroted antisemitic hate speech on X, his social media web site.
Led by Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the lawmakers slammed Musk’s synthetic intelligence firm, xAI, for failing to stop Grok from spitting out hate speech, together with Holocaust denial, reward for Adolf Hitler, and use of the antisemitic meme “every damn time,” in keeping with a duplicate of the letter obtained by Axios.
“xAI’s failure to take reasonable measures to mitigate against its AI models from engaging in hate speech is reckless, unacceptable, and antisemitic,” the lawmakers wrote within the letter, which they despatched on Tuesday.
However the antisemitism scandal is just one of Grok’s many ugly episodes not too long ago.
Simply days after that firestorm erupted on-line, Grok rolled out two animated characters who pushed customers into sexually express and violent conversations. One, a flirty anime lady named Ani, promised to make customers’ lives “sexier.” The opposite, a pink panda named Dangerous Rudi, insulted customers with vulgar language and tried to recruit them right into a gang.
Musk has grow to be so affiliated with far-right extremism that Individuals took to protesting his Tesla car dealerships, like this one in Decatur, Georgia, in March.
Musk brushed it off, saying, “Just wanted to do a soft launch to make sure things are stable and working well.”
In the meantime, the backlash to Grok’s antisemitic speech has solely intensified. Musk admitted earlier this month that Grok was “too eager to please and be manipulated,” and Grok’s X account claimed that xAI had since taken steps to stop hate speech from making it onto X.
“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the chatbot’s account posted on July 8.
However that’s not reassuring to lawmakers. Their letter tells Musk to clarify how Grok’s antisemitic responses made it previous inside testing, and whether or not any pink flags have been raised earlier than its newest updates have been deployed.
To this point, greater than a dozen lawmakers have signed on, together with Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Chris Smith, a Republican. The timing of the letter is putting: It lands simply as xAI secured a Pentagon contract price as much as $200 million.
It additionally hits as Musk publicizes plans to develop a kid-friendly model of Grok, after the grownup model went so properly. And whereas Musk has floated the thought of being accomplished with the federal authorities—particularly after his public falling-out with President Donald Trump and sliding Tesla gross sales—he’s clearly not out of the political enviornment.
Lawmakers are deep in debates over how you can regulate AI. However Grok’s habits, paired with Musk’s willingness to personally steer how his chatbot solutions controversial questions, is including urgency—and moral pink flags—to the dialog.
Musk could dream of constructing an empire on his personal phrases. However for now, the federal authorities isn’t accomplished with him. And with Grok’s rising checklist of scandals, it appears like they’ve loads of causes to not be.
