The ban stems from content generated by Grok deemed allegedly insulting to Turkish founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Prophet Muhammed.
The court’s decision to block Grok was announced by Turkey’s Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA).
The ban makes Turkey the first country in the world to censor the Grok AI tool, according to legal scholar Yaman Akdeniz.
Following the ban, Grok released a statement saying the platform was aware of the recent issues and was working to fix them:
“We are aware of recent content by Grok and are actively working to remove inappropriate posts. Since we were notified of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech. xAI trains a model that only seeks the truth, and thanks to millions of users at X, we can quickly identify areas for improvement and update the model.”
Grok’s allegedly insulting content related to Atatürk, Erdogan, and Muhammed arose following an update to the platform released last week. Users also reported content from Grok following the update praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and making fun of recent child deaths in floods in Texas.
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Other recent bans in Turkey have included an 8-day block on Instagram access in August 2024, and a ban on the Roblox gaming platform that same month.
Written/translated for Medyascope by Leo Kendrick
