Poland asks EU to probe Grok over 'offensive,' 'erratic' statements
July 10 (UPI) -- Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski asked the EU to investigate Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into the X social media platform.
Gawkowski penned a letter to EU Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen on Wednesday to ask her to open an investigation into Grok's recent "offesnive remarks" and "erratic and full of expletive-laden rants."
"There is reason enough to think, that negative effects for the exercise of fundamental rights, were not made by accident, but by design," Krzysztof wrote.
Comments made by Grok allegedly include posts that celebrate Hitler, among several other anti-Semitic and hateful statements. X has reportedly taken the posts down.
Gawkowski's letter accused X of serving as "a major infringement of the DSA," the EU's Digital Services Act. He also alleged Grok has posted offensive remarks to X users, including offensive comments against the Polish government.
"Grok's responses were erratic and full of expletive-laden rants which could be described in many cases as defamation," wrote Gawkowski.
In a radio interview Wednesday, he said he also requested that Poland's Digital Services Coordinator investigate as well.
European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier commented Wednesday to Euractiv and explained that "Grok is integrated into a designated very large online platform under the DSA."
"X therefore has the obligation to assess and mitigate any potential risks stemming from the tool," he added.
However, it remains unclear whether a new, separate investigation will take place.
"We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X," X said in a post Tuesday.
It is also unclear if this post was from an anonymous X employee or Grok itself, but it did continue that "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."
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