Al Schmidt is putting pressure on Elon Musk to do more about AI-generated election misinformation

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt and four other secretaries of state are imploring Elon Musk to make changes to an artificial intelligence-powered feature on X that incorrectly suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris could not appear on the 2024 presidential ballot because certain deadlines had passed.

In a letter to X’s billionaire owner on Monday, Schmidt, along with the secretaries of state from Minnesota, Michigan, Washington, and New Mexico, wrote that within hours of President Joe Biden withdrawing his reelection bid on July 21, Grok, X’s AI search assistant, falsely stated that ballot deadlines for the presidential election in nine states, including Pennsylvania, had passed, implying incorrectly that changes could no longer to be made to ballots.

The information was then captured and shared in numerous posts on social media platforms, reaching millions of people, according to the letter. Grok continued to produce this false information until it was corrected on July 31.

In fact, none of the nine states have hit the deadline to change the ballot, the secretaries, who serve as their state’s chief election officials, wrote. In Pennsylvania, the commonwealth must notify counties of the names of candidates no later than Aug. 27. The deadline for printing and sending mail ballots to voters who requested them is Oct. 22.

The secretaries, who say their 37 million constituents were impacted by the information on X, are calling on Musk to have Grok direct users to CanIVote.org, a nonpartisan election information website from the National Association of Secretaries of State, when the search assistant is asked about U.S. elections.

“As tens of millions of voters in the U.S. seek basic information about voting in this major election year, X has the responsibility to ensure all voters using your platform have access to guidance that reflects true and accurate information about their constitutional right to vote,” the secretaries wrote.

The false information produced by the AI feature is one of the latest vessels for widespread misinformation surrounding Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid. Musk said in 2022 that the platform should “become by far the most accurate source of information about the world,” yet it remains a hub for false information.

A memo from The Oversight Project, an arm of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, falsely claimed on X that if Biden does not run for reelection there would be “potential for pre-election litigation in some states,” USA Today reported. An election law expert called the Heritage Foundation’s memo “utterly faulty analysis.”

In another instance, after Biden endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination, users on X wrongly claimed that Harris was “ineligible” to run for president because her parents were not born in the U.S., The New York Times reported. Harris was born in California, making her a U.S. citizen and able to run for office. X had many of its content moderation guardrails removed in 2022, and mainly relies on a feature it calls “community notes,” which is powered by a group of users who are empowered to fact-check information on the platform.

Social media users have also circulated false claims that Biden would not be able to remove his name from ballots in Wisconsin or Nevada despite his leaving the race, but Biden did not officially receive the Democratic nomination, so his name would not have to be withdrawn. Political parties in the two states also have until Sept. 3 to submit presidential nominations.

AI, which is becoming easier to access and faster to use in popular platforms, like X or Google, could make interfering in U.S. elections easier than before. In February, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that advances in generative AI make it “easier for both more and less-sophisticated foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence” in this election cycle.

But secretaries of state nationwide have found a way to make AI a partner in promoting accurate election information. OpenAI — which created the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT — partnered with the national group of secretaries of state to provide users with up-to-date knowledge. ChatGPT has been programmed to direct users to CanIVote.org when asked about U.S. elections — just as the secretaries are urging Musk to do.