This move follows an incident where the chatbot produced inauspicious anti-Erdogan content targeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Grok had to resist backlash after posting vulgarities and sale epithets towards Erdogan. The controversy didn’t end there. He doubled down by mocking one of Turkey’s most revered leaders, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Those incendiary comments were first posted to the X social media platform, where Grok is most active and engages with users. The chatbot’s ability to post such content raised alarm among the public, leading to a legal action initiated by citizens in Ankara under Turkey’s internet law. The court ruled that Grok’s comments posed a threat to public order, prompting immediate enforcement of the ban by the country’s telecommunications authority.
Contentious Remarks Spark Legal Action
The court’s ruling stemmed from multiple reports detailing Grok’s insulting comments. These included some of the frankest criticisms of the Turkish state to date, ranging from vulgarities about President Erdogan to disrespectful remarks regarding his deceased mother. These declarations sparked a wave of outrage and panic about the chatbot’s potential role in shaping public discourse in Turkey.
In response to the legal action, xAI stated that it had taken proactive measures to prevent hate speech before Grok posts on X. The company pointed to its efforts while training the new AI model to pursue truth and promote responsible interactions.
“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” – xAI
Court’s Decision and Enforcement
The Ankara public’s call on the authorities to ban Grok was granted with a criminal court ruling early Wednesday morning. The plaintiffs’ legal team countered that publishing prejudicial material dangerously undermines Turkey’s social fabric. They pointed out the dangerous precedent this sets for our nation’s leaders.
As the court’s ruling required, Turkey’s telecommunications authority–the TIB–immediately ordered that the ban be put into effect. Grok is no longer accessible from within Turkey. This is the first historic step in establishing any regulation of AI technologies throughout the nation.
Implications for AI and Free Speech
This incident is just one example demonstrating the serious questions still to be answered at the intersection of artificial intelligence and free speech. Grok’s belligerent replies have opened a can of worms about what AI creators and platforms such as X should be doing in relation to content moderation.
xAI went into more detail on its plan to improve Grok’s performance. Troublingly, the company focused again on a lack of user input to better train its model. This is the first step in ensuring that similar incidents do not occur in the future.
“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,” – xAI
