In a major move, a Turkish court has blocked access to Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok on Wednesday (July 9), alleging that it has generated offensive responses about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and religious values.
This comes as Grok faces widespread criticism over Nazi statements it made recently.
Moreover, it also infuriated the government in Warsaw with offensive comments targeting Polish politicians including Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The Turkey’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched a probe into Grok, operated by Musk’s xAI, stating “in response to Grok’s insults against Atatürk, our esteemed President, and the Prophet.”
Following the request, Turkey’s Criminal Court of Peace granted the prosecutor’s request to block access to Grok. It added that the telecom authority is also enforcing that block on internet access providers.
It marks Turkey’s first such ban on content from an artificial intelligence tool.
Yaman Akdeniz, a cyber law expert at Istanbul Bilgi University, stressed that Turkey has become the first country to impose censorship on Grok.
He said that the authorities had identified some 50 posts by Grok, that will be considered as the basis for investigation.
Earlier today, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI deleted “inappropriate” posts on X after Grok praised Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as “MechaHitler”. It further made antisemitic comments while responding to people’s queries.
But, after users pointed out, Grok deleted some of the posts and restricted the chatbot to generating images rather than replying in text.
“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,” the company said in a post on X.
After Grok used abusive remarks for the Polish PM, Musk took to X, posting, “We have improved @Grok significantly. You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions.”