Turkey bans Elon Musk’s Grok over politically incorrect AI content

A Turkish court has banned Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot claiming that its AI content generation shows politically incorrect and unfiltered content. The development comes after a local news channel called A Haber pointed out that Grok has been generating vulgar content around Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother, as well as around members from Turkey’s media fraternity and other public personalities. 

Ankara residents urged a court to restrict Grok, citing its generation of inappropriate content during user interactions. Responding to the requests, the court has directed telecom operators in the country to enforce a ban on Musk’s AI chatbot, Associated Press reported on Wednesday, July 9. 

Commenting on the development, X said that it has been made aware about the situation and that it was taking immediate steps to rid Grok of the hate speech and other questionable content. 

“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,” the AP report quoted xAI as commenting on the situation. As of now, Musk has not addressed the development through his social media handles. 

For now, it remains unclear if Turkey will reverse the law. 

Earlier in February this year, Musk’s AI firm xAI released Grok 3 with new updates. Since its launch, the Grok 3 model has repeatedly made it to the headlines for its controversial content generation pattern. 

In July this year for instance, the AI chatbot reportedly responded to a user query with blunt antisemitic responses. Reports of Grok having generated fake breaking news stories around geopolitics have also surfaced in recent months among other instances. According to a BBC News story, Grok also generated pro-Hitler responses, adding to the controversies.