X's AI chatbot spread voter misinformation – and election officials fought back

Soon after Joe Biden announced he was ending his bid for re-election, misinformation started spreading online about whether a new candidate could take the president's place. Screenshots that claimed a new candidate could not be added to ballots in nine states moved quickly around Twitter, now X, racking up millions of views. The Minnesota secretary of state's office began getting requests for fact-checks of these posts, which were flat-out wrong – ballot deadlines had not passed, giving Kamala Harris plenty of time to have her name added to ballots. When users asked the artificial intelligence tool whether a new candidate still had time to be added to ballots, Grok gave the incorrect answer. Finding the source – and working to correct it – served as a test case of how election officials and artificial intelligence companies will interact during the 2024 presidential election in the US amid fears that AI could mislead or distract voters.