


A Turkish court ordered Wednesday a ban on access to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok from Turkey, after the platform allegedly disseminated content insulting to Turkey’s president and others.
The chatbot, developed by Musk’s company xAI, posted vulgarities against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and other personalities while responding to users’ questions on the X social media platform, the pro-government A Haber news channel reported.
Offensive responses were also directed at modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, other media outlets said.
That prompted the Ankara chief prosecutor to file for the imposition of restrictions under Turkey’s internet law, 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 broader controversy surrounding a recent update to Grok, which resulted in more “politically incorrect” and unfiltered responses.
In response to mounting controversy, X said it was aware of the recent posts and had taken immediate action to remove inappropriate content.
“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the company said in a statement.
“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,” it said.
On Tuesday, Grok posted a series of messages featuring antisemitic tropes about Jewish anti-white hatred and Jewish control of the government and Hollywood.
The chatbot also suggested Nazi leader Adolf Hitler would be best suited to deal with such “vile anti-White hate” as he would “spot the pattern.”
Grok later removed what it called the “inappropriate” social media posts after receiving complaints from X users and the Anti-Defamation League.