X’s Grok will direct users to Vote.gov after bungling basic ballot question

Elon Musk’s X platform made a change to its AI assistant, Grok, that may prevent it from giving users false information on election ballot deadlines and other election-related matters. From now on, X says that Grok will direct users to Vote.gov when asked election-related questions.

X, formerly Twitter, made the change about two weeks after five secretaries of state complained to the company. “On August 21, 2024, X’s Head of US and Canada Global Government Affairs informed the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State [Steve Simon] that the platform has made changes to its AI search assistant, Grok, after a request from several Secretaries of State,” Simon’s office said in a press release yesterday.

Grok is developed by xAI, one of Musk’s other companies, and is available on X to paying subscribers.

Simon and the secretaries of state from Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Washington sent a letter to Musk about Grok on August 5. The letter pointed out that “within hours of President Joe Biden stepping away from his presidential candidacy on July 21, 2024, false information on ballot deadlines produced by Grok was shared on multiple social media platforms.”

The false Grok post said that the “ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” and listed nine states in which the deadline had supposedly expired. “This is false. In all nine states the opposite is true: The ballots are not closed, and upcoming ballot deadlines would allow for changes to candidates listed on the ballot for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States,” the August 5 letter said.

X took its time correcting false post

Grok, which has also been known to make up false news based on X users’ jokes, continued making the false ballot-deadline statement until July 31. Grok “provided inaccurate information on elections rules… and then delayed correcting its own mistake for ten days, even after it learned that the information it had spread was false,” Simon’s office said.

While that particular piece of false information was eventually corrected, the secretaries of state told Musk that X should “immediately adopt a policy of directing Grok users to CanIVote.org when asked about elections in the US.”

CanIVote.org redirects to a page maintained by the National Association of Secretaries of State. X will instead direct users to Vote.gov, which is maintained by the US government.

The secretaries of state said they are satisfied with the change given that Vote.gov and CanIvote.org are both trustworthy resources. “We appreciate X’s action to improve their platform and hope they continue to make improvements that will ensure their users have access to accurate information from trusted sources in this critical election year,” the state officials said in a joint statement.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT was already programmed to direct users to CanIVote.org, their recent letter said. “As you know, inaccuracies are to be expected for any AI products, especially chatbots based on large language models… As tens of millions of voters in the US 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 state officials wrote to Musk.