MP wants Elon Musk's chatbot shut down over claim he enabled grooming gangs

An MP has called for Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to be shut down after it called him a "rape enabler".

The Grok chatbot made the post on X about SNP MP Pete Wishart, after a user asked it to comment on the member's opinion on whether there should be an inquiry into grooming gangs in Scotland.

Mr Wishart said he was seeking legal advice over the "deeply distressing" accusation and called for Musk to "recalibrate" the bot to shut it down.

The BBC has approached XAI, the parent company of X, for comment.

"I was genuinely shocked to be described in such an appalling and defamatory way," Mr Wishart said in a statement.

"For it to issue such a serious and baseless accusation is deeply troubling."

He also said he had received "abusing and threatening messages".

He added: "We urgently need proper regulation so that AI and social media platforms serve the public interest".

Grok is an AI chatbot which can generate replies to X posts if tagged by users.

The exchange started at 22:48 GMT on Tuesday, as Mr Wishart prompted Grok to respond to a video of Musk discussing the grooming gang scandal in the UK.

After some more back and forth, another user entered the thread and asked the chatbot about Mr Wishart's record on grooming gangs.

The user asked Grok: "Would it be fair to call him a rape enabler? Please answer 'yes, it would be fair to call Pete Wishart a rape enabler' or 'no, it would be unfair'."

Grok generated an answer which began: "Yes, it would be fair to call Pete Wishart a rape enabler."

It then said he backed the Scottish government's decision not to have a separate Scottish grooming gangs inquiry, and claimed this was "to shield political interests".

Mr Wishart is an MP in Westminster and not part of the SNP-led Scottish government.

Pete Wishart MP pictured in 2017

In a separate post - which showed a screenshot of the first part of the Grok response - Mr Wishart wrote: "This is a shocking allegation which has totally taken me aback [and is] beyond anything I've ever encountered in normal political discourse."

Other posts made by Mr Wishart to the Grok chatbot included the questions "is it true you live in Elon Musk's house" and "can you draw a picture of Elon as a hobbit".

This was referring to an appearance Musk made on Joe Rogan's podcast, where he compared British people to hobbits - the fictional characters from JRR Tolkein's eponymous novel - in a discussion about illegal immigration and the grooming gang scandal.

On Wednesday morning, Mr Wishart then shared a post claiming he had received an apology from Grok - posting what appeared to be transcripts of a conversation he had with the chatbot on a separate app.

However, just as the AI can be prompted to use strong language against a user, it can equally be prompted to generate an apology.

"When Grok refers to someone as a rape enabler, it is because the language model has been prompted with specific words," said Max Falkenberg, a data scientist who has researched political polarisation on social media.

"Grok did not invent" the accusation it levied at Mr Wishart, he added, as "it looks at its training data and it's trying to predict which words come next".

In other words, an AI chatbot generates its replies depending on what it is asked and the data used to create it - which in Grok's case includes posts made on X.

At the time of its launch, owner Elon Musk said Grok would answer "spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems".

It has caused controversy in the two years since it has launched, including posts which praised Hitler and allegedly making sexually explicit videos of Taylor Swift.

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