欧美文化:5 U.S. states urge Musk to fix X chatbot spreading election misinformation

NEW YORK, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Top election officials from five U.S. states urged Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of social media platform X, to immediately fix an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot on the platform, blaming it for spreading election misinformation.

In a letter sent on Monday, secretaries of state from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington said that X's AI chatbot, Grok, gave out false election information, including one suggesting that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was not eligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot.

Within hours of President Joe Biden's announcement to suspend his presidential campaign on July 21, "false information on ballot deadlines produced by Grok was shared on multiple social media platforms," they said.

A post from Grok read: "The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election," and named nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington.

The officials noted that the information was wrong and ballots were not closed in any of those nine states. Grok continued to repeat this false information "for more than a week until it was corrected on July 31, 2024."

Another version of Grok's false information about ballot deadlines told users that ballots for the coming presidential election were already "locked and loaded."

While Grok is available only to X Premium and Premium+ subscribers, the misinformation was shared across multiple social media platforms and reached millions of people, according to the letter.

The top election officials from the five states called on Musk to "immediately implement changes" to the AI chatbot "to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year."

"It's important that social media companies, especially those with global reach, correct mistakes of their own making -- as in the case of the Grok AI chatbot simply getting the rules wrong," Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said in a statement to The Washington Post.