3 months ago
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It’s hard to contain all the weekend’s Elon Musk news in one post, but let’s try. The tech mogul had a busy two days of posting and fending off investigations. He said a civil war in Britain was inevitable, faces accusations in Michigan of misappropriating voter data, and is awaiting a letter from five Secretaries of State over his AI chatbot spreading election misinformation.
On Sunday, Michigan announced it was investigating Musk’s political action committee for possible violations of state law. Musk launched America PAC after he denied reports that he planned to donate $45 million a month to Trump’s re-election bid. The money wasn’t real, but the PAC very much was.
When America PAC launched its website, it had a “register to vote” button and a “request a ballot” button. According to a report from CNBC, clicking the “register to vote” button would take you to different places depending on where you lived. If you lived in California, say, then the site would dump you off at that state’s voter registration page.
But if you lived in a battleground state like Michigan, the site would ask you to fill out a form for detailed personal information. It did not take users to a voter registration page and did not explain what it was doing with all this personal info.
“We will refer potential violations to the Michigan Attorney General’s office as appropriate,” a spokesperson for Michigan’s secretary of state told Reuters. “Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by PACs, especially if an entity is claiming it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state.”
As of this writing, the “register to vote” and “request a ballot” buttons are gone from the America PAC website.
In other election-related Musk news, five secretaries of state are writing an open letter to the CEO over allegations that his AI chatbot Grok is spreading misinformation. Michigan is involved here too, but Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon is leading the charge. The other Secretaries hail from Washington, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico.
The problem is that Grok started telling its users Vice President Kamala Harris was not eligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot because she’d missed several deadlines in key states.
“The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” the Grok post said. The states were Washington, Texas, Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
The Secretaries told the Washington Post that they plan to send the letter on Monday. The letter will ask Musk to “immediately implement changes to X’s AI search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.”
Musk also turned his carrion eye towards the U.K. over the weekend. Last week, a knife-wielding 17-year-old stabbed and killed three children and injured eight more in Southport, U.K. Police captured the suspect, Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, who is so British that he was born in Cardiff and once appeared in a charity advert dressed as Doctor Who.
But rumors online spread that Rudakubana was an illegal immigrant and that rumor set off waves of riots over the weekend. Footage of the riots spread on social media and Musk replied to video of the riots on X.
“Civil war is inevitable,” he said.
“There’s no justification for comments like that,” Dave Pares, a spokesperson for the newly minted U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, told journalists on Monday. “Anyone who stokes this violence whether on the internet or in person can be prosecuted and face prison.”
Let’s see how the rest of the week goes for Mr. Musk.
