Turkish judiciary blocks the Grok robot after it was accused of insulting the Turkish president!
A Turkish court has ordered the blocking of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, after it generated responses that authorities said included insults to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Information and Communications Technologies Authority (BTK) imposed the blocking order after a court order, citing Grok’s violation of laws criminalizing insulting the president, a crime punishable by up to four years in prison in Türkiye.
While critics of the law argue that its used to suppress dissent, the government maintains that it’s necessary to protect the prestige of the presidential office.
Last March, Turkish authorities arrested former Miss Türkiye Banu Öztürk, on orders from the Beykoz prosecutor’s office, on charges of insulting Erdoğan and government officials on her social media account.
However, this is the first case of its kind in Türkiye in which an AI tool has been blocked due to such allegations.
Media outlets reported that Grok, integrated into the X platform, generated offensive content against Erdoğan when it was asked questions in Turkish.
The Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Wednesday that it had opened an official investigation into the incident.
Concerns have previously been raised about political bias and hate speech in the field of AI, with Grok accused of producing content that included anti-Semitic claims and praise for Adolf Hitler.
