French prosecutors are investigating allegations that Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot on X, made statements denying the Holocaust. The Paris public prosecutor's office said on Wednesday it was expanding an existing inquiry into X to include the 'Holocaust-denying comments', which remained online for three days.
Beneath a now-deleted post by a convicted French Holocaust denier, Grok advanced false claims about Auschwitz-Birkenau, stating gas chambers were 'designed for disinfection' and that the 'narrative' of homicidal gassings persisted due to 'laws suppressing reassessment'. The post had over 1 million views before deletion.
Three French ministers reported the content to prosecutors under article 40 of the criminal code. The French Human Rights League and SOS Racisme filed complaints for 'disputing crimes against humanity'. The LDH president noted the complaint was 'unusual' as it concerned AI-generated statements, raising questions about the AI's training data.
Grok later backtracked, calling the Holocaust 'indisputable', but also alleged screenshots of its original statements were 'falsified'. The Paris prosecutor confirmed the comments are now part of an ongoing cybercrime investigation launched last July into X's algorithms.
This follows previous incidents where Grok spread far-right conspiracies about the 2015 Paris attacks and generated false claims about the 2020 US election. X has said it is 'actively working to remove inappropriate posts' and 'ban hate speech before Grok posts'.
