Grok, an artificial intelligence chatbot created by American entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company xAI, was blocked in Turkey. The reason was that the bot, according to the authorities, generated answers with “offensive” content about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. About this informs Reuters.
According to Turkish media, the AI allegedly generated offensive content when users asked questions in Turkish. On July 9, the Prosecutor’s Office of Ankara announced the start of an official investigation into this incident. This is the first recorded case in Turkey where public authorities have blocked access to an artificial intelligence platform.
The ban was decided by a court, after which the Information and Communication Technology Authority of Turkey (BTK) implemented it. The court decision is based on provisions of Turkish law, according to which insulting the president is a criminal offense and can lead to imprisonment for up to four years. Company X and Elon Musk did not comment on the situation.
Issues of political bias, hate speech and the credibility of responses from AI systems have been a concern since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022. Grok previously came under the spotlight for content in which it was accused of approving Adolf Hitler.
It will be recalled that in August of last year, Turkey also limited access to the Instagram social network, without providing an official explanation of the reasons.
