Elon Musk’s AI chatbot spread false information about Alabama election: Wes Allen rejected request for accuracy, says counterpart

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen has refused to join a letter to Elon Musk from top election officials in five other states urging the tech billionaire to point users of his social media site X to accurate election information after X’s artificial intelligence chatbot provided false information, according to his Minnesota counterpart.

After President Biden announced on July 21 that he was withdrawing from the 2024 race, the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok posted that the Democrat who replaced Biden as the party’s nominee would be barred from the ballot in nine states, including Alabama, five secretaries of state wrote in a letter to Musk on Monday, led by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon.

“The deadline to vote has passed in several states for the 2024 election,” Grok’s post stated, according to the letter. “Some of these states include: 1. Alabama 2. Indiana 3. Michigan 4. Minnesota 5. New Mexico 6. Ohio 7. Pennsylvania 8. Texas 9. Washington.”

Alabama’s ballot access deadline has passed.

On July 21, the day Biden dropped his reelection bid, Allen told AL.com that Aug. 23 is the deadline to certify the nominees for president and vice president.

The letter sent to Musk on Monday said Grok’s post also provided “false” information about the other eight states.

“In all nine states, the opposite is true: the ballots are not closed and upcoming voting deadlines would allow for changes to the candidates on the ballot for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States,” the letter states.

Simon and the four other attorneys general who signed the letter are Democrats.

Allen is a Republican. His office was contacted before the letter was sent to Musk, but “they declined to be included,” according to a spokeswoman for Simon.

AL.com’s efforts to reach Allen’s office were unsuccessful.

The letter urged Musk to direct Grok’s posts to direct users asking about the 2024 election to CanIVote.org in the wake of misinformation. The nonpartisan website run by the National Association of Secretaries of State “was created by state election officials to help eligible voters find out how and where to vote,” the site states.

While Grok is only available to users of X Premium and X Premium+ (the social media site’s paid tiers), the post “has been screenshotted and shared repeatedly across multiple publications, reaching millions of people,” the letter said.

Meanwhile, the AI ​​chatbot “continued to repeat this false information for over a week until it was corrected” last Wednesday, the secretaries wrote.

They highlighted a post by Musk on X two years ago in which the tech billionaire wrote that the social media site “has to become, by far, the most accurate source of information about the world. That is our mission.”

“We hope you will be up to this mission,” the letter states.