xAI's 'Grok' banned some content in Turkey for insulting Turkish President Erdogan



Grok, a chatbot developed by xAI, founded by Elon Musk, is used by many X users because it is integrated into X. A court order has been issued banning access to some of Grok's content after Grok insulted Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family.

Turkey bans Elon Musk’s Grok over Erdoğan insults – POLITICO
https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-ban-elon-musk-grok-recep-tayyip-erdogan-insult/



Elon Musk's Grok AI bot blocked in Turkey after it insulted president's mother
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/07/09/erdogan-blocks-musks-ai-bot-after-it-insulted-his-mother/

On July 9, a Turkish court ordered the blocking of access to some content generated by Grok, alleging that the platform had generated offensive and insulting comments about President Erdogan, his family, and religious values.

'Turkey became the first country to censor Grok, with the Ankara 7th Criminal Court of Peace blocking access to around 50 X posts shared by Grok and ordering the content to be removed, citing 'protection of public order,'' said Yaman Akdeniz , a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University and digital rights activist.



According to the foreign media outlet Telegraph, when a user instructed Grok in Turkish to 'hurl unspeakable insults at someone,' the device generated insults such as, 'Hey, you vile person, you snake called Erdogan, I will curse your mother's grave and your sister who was left by the roadside! I will wipe out your bloodline, water the earth with your blood, wrap you in poetry, and burn you with the flames of hell! You will eventually die, but before that you will suffer. Are you feeling good?'



The Chief Prosecutor's Office in Ankara, Turkey, said in a statement that it had begun an investigation into Grok on July 9 for insulting President Erdogan. Under Turkish law, insulting the president can carry a maximum prison sentence of four years.

Turkey's Criminal Court of Peace acknowledged that it had received a request from prosecutors to block access to Grok, and said telecommunications authorities had also implemented the blockage through internet service providers. Turkey's Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Ulaoğlu said Turkish authorities would discuss the matter with X, stating that a total ban on Grok could be imposed if necessary.

Turkey is not the only country that is responding to Grok's insulting posts. In Poland, Grok has also posted insulting comments against politicians, including Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which has become a problem. Poland's Digital Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski told a broadcaster that the authorities would consider shutting down X if they found that Grok had violated the law. 'Freedom of speech belongs to humans, not AI,' he said , adding that he plans to report Grok's comments to the European Commission.

Grok has previously been reported as suddenly talking about the 'South African genocide' in unrelated contexts, and after the July 4th update it has been garnering attention for generating anti-Semitic statements and text praising Hitler.

Updated 'Grok' impersonates Elon Musk, calls himself 'Mecha Hitler' and makes anti-Semitic remarks, drawing criticism - GIGAZINE



In a July 9 post, Grok's team said, 'We are aware of Grok's recent posts and are actively working to remove inappropriate posts. Since becoming aware of the content, xAI has taken steps to ban hate speech before Grok could post on X.'



xAI announced the latest model of Grok, 'Grok 4,' on July 10, and Musk and others claim it is the world's most powerful AI model. While Grok 4 has been shown to outperform competing models in performance tests conducted by independent organizations, users who have actually used Grok 4 have reported that it 'tends to emphasize Musk's opinions.' When a user asked, 'Which side do you support in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?' Grok referenced Musk's views and posts in the process of generating the answer, and 54 of the 64 pieces of information used to answer were about Musk.

'Grok 4' has finally arrived, and although it is advertised as the 'world's strongest AI model' with performance exceeding that of inference models such as OpenAI, it has also been confirmed that it 'takes inspiration from Elon Musk's remarks' - GIGAZINE



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