Elon Musk's AI-powered chatbot Grok has now been banned in a major country with over 85,000,000 residents, registering as a major blow to the tech mogul's growing expansion on social media.
While ChatGPT might be the dominant force in the AI world, much to the chagrin of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's rivals, Elon Musk's own alternative has a rather unique feature that makes it stand out amongst the crowd.
Following xAI's shocking purchase of social media platform X for a staggering $45,000,000,000 figure, Grok is now able to be integrated fully into the app and website, allowing users not only to directly access the chatbot but also activate it in the replies to posts.
If you've clicked on any popular tweets in the last few months you'll likely have noticed people tagging '@grok' to clarify information, ask questions, or generate images, and it has had some unusual results, to say the least.
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What began as calling Musk the platform's biggest spreader of misinformation soon turned into bizarre right wing conspiracy theories, including claims of 'white genocide' in South Africa.
Concerning posts were forcibly deleted by Musk and his team after they were called out by X users, but continued strange hallucinations have led to one major country pulling the plug on Grok altogether.
What country has banned Grok?
As reported by Breaking The News, Grok has now officially been banned in Türkiye, as announced by the Ankara Chief Prosecutor's Office on Wednesday, July 8, 2025.
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It's unclear quite how this ban will be formed, as it doesn't appear as if X is also banned, so it could be that Musk's company has to manually disable the AI chatbot for Turkish residents.
In addition to the ban, the prosecutor's office has also launched an investigation into 'offensive content' shared by Grok about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which appears to have motivated the ban.
It appears as if content generated by Grok contained insults towards Erdoğan and individuals from his inner circle, alongside former Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
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Insults such as these towards key government officials in Türkiye are punishable by up to four years in prison, so understandably the government is taking the content produced by Grok seriously.
Responding to the ban, the official Grok account on X outlined the following:
"We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved."
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This is also in reference to the barrage of pro-Nazi and antisemetic content produced by Grok in recent days, which some allege prompted the departure of X CEO Linda Yacccarino.
Speaking to RMF 24 in reference to recent content produced by Grok, Polish Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski declared that he would also consider following in the footsteps of Türkiye by banning Grok, issuing a potentially impactful statement that could signal the future of laws surrounding AI-generated content.
"Freedom of speech belongs to humans, not artificial intelligence," Gawkowski illustrated.