Turkish court orders ban on Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok for offensive content

Ankara, Türkiye – A Turkish court on Wednesday ordered a ban on access to the chatbot of the artificial intelligence of Elon Musk, Grok of Turkey, after the platform has disseminated insulting content to the president of Turkey and others.

The Chatbot, developed by the Musk company, XAI, published vulgarities against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and personalities, while answering users’ questions on the X social media platform, reported the pro-government information chain. Offensive responses have also been directed to the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, other media said.

This prompted the public to Ankara to file a request for restrictions under the Internet Act in Türkiye, citing a threat to public order. A criminal court approved the request early on Wednesday, ordering the country’s telecommunications authority to enforce the ban.

The incident is part of a larger controversy surrounding a recent Grok update, which led to more “politically incorrect” and unremitted responses.

In response to increasing controversy, X said that he was aware of recent messages and had taken immediate measures to delete inappropriate content.

“Since he was informed of the content, XAI has taken measures to ban the speech of hatred before Grok published on X,” the company said in a statement.

“XAI only forms the search for truth, and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to identify and update the model quickly where training could be improved,” he said.