Turkish court orders ban on Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok for offensive content about Erdogan

A Turkish court orders a ban on access to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok from Turkey, after the platform allegedly disseminated content insulting to Turkey’s president and others.

The chatbot, developed by Musk’s company xAI, posted vulgarities against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and personalities, while responding to users’ questions on the X social media platform, the pro-government A Haber news channel reports. Offensive responses were also directed toward modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, other media outlets said.

That prompted the Ankara chief prosecutor to file for the imposition of restrictions under Turkey’s internet law, citing a threat to public order. A criminal court approved the request early today, ordering the country’s telecommunications authority to enforce the ban.

The incident is part of a broader controversy surrounding a recent update to Grok, which resulted in more “politically incorrect” and unfiltered responses, including antisemitic tropes and praise for Adolf Hitler.

In response to mounting controversy, X said it was aware of the recent posts and had taken immediate action to remove inappropriate content.

“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the companysays said in a statement.

“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,” it said.