A Turkish court has ordered a ban on access to some content from Grok, a chatbot from Elon Musk's xAI company, after the bot generated responses that authorities deemed offensive to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and religious values, Reuters reports.
This is the first time in Turkey that restrictions have been imposed on artificial intelligence. The Ankara Prosecutor's Office opened criminal proceedings and the Information and Communication Technologies Board (BTK) imposed the restrictions based on a court decision. Violations carry a prison sentence of up to four years.
According to cyberlaw expert Yaman Akdeniz, the investigation was prompted by approximately 50 responses from Grok that authorities believed threatened public order. The content was created in response to requests in Turkish.
Neither xAI nor Elon Musk have officially commented on the situation. Musk recently promised to update Grok, stating that the chatbot needed to be "less politically correct." After this "fix," xAI restricted the bot's ability to write in X because it began praising Hitler.