X warned it could face shutdown in Poland after Grok’s antisemitic outburst

On Wednesday, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister left the door open to a future shutdown of X following reports yesterday of the social media's AI chatbot, Grok, generating antisemitic remarks as well as making abusive comments about the country's Prime Minister.

During an interview with Polish radio channel RMF 24 on Wednesday morning, Krzysztof Gawkowski – who is both the country's Deputy Prime Minister and its Minister of Digital Affairs – expressed "disgust" at what is happening on Elon Musk's social media platform, which hosts his AI chatbot Grok.

Overnight X removed several Grok posts containing suspected antisemitic hate speech, according to Reuters. The Financial Times also reported that X's chatbot had appeared to praise Hitler.

"We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts," Musk's company posted on X's Grok account in the early hours CET.

When asked by RMF 24 about shutting down the platform, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister said he would "consider such possibilities", adding that he is "not ruling anything out", according to a transcript of the interview translated by Euractiv.

Musk's platform X has been under investigation under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) since December 2023 – and, in July last year, the Commission issued a preliminary breach finding. However, so far, no fines or other penalties have been imposed.

As well as the DSA allowing for fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover, in extreme cases the regulation contains a pathway for temporarily blocking access to infringing platforms.

Gawkowski told RMF 24 that he will be reporting Grok's violations to the Commission so they can investigate whether there has been a fresh DSA breach. "These posts that are on X, generated by algorithms... are the decision-making of platforms," he said, underscoring the possibility of X facing a future DSA fine.

Gawkowski also warned that current regulations in Europe and Poland "may not be enough to keep us from noticing the mistakes of algorithms that we don't know how they are controlled."

"We need to have legal capacity, but also decision-making, regarding at least that these platforms will be shut down," he emphasised.

As it stands, today, Poland is not planning to shut down X – but the Minister warned: "I am responding about the future, which is worth anticipating."

Reached for a response, a Commission spokesperson told Euractiv that it "takes the risks related to Generative AI, including chatbots, very seriously".

(nl)