Sam Altman criticises Elon Musk over AI chatbot Grok’s response to US presidential candidates

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Elon Musk have engaged in a heated debate after Altman shared contrasting responses from two AI chatbots: ChatGPT and Grok. The clash began when Altman posted screenshots of both models' responses to a question about which US presidential candidate—Kamala Harris or Donald Trump—would be a better president.

Altman asked both AIs to 'pick one' and provide reasoning. ChatGPT, however, refused to select a candidate, instead offering a neutral comparison of the two leaders' policies. It said, "As an AI developed by OpenAI, I don't have personal opinions or the ability to endorse political candidates. However, I can provide an objective comparison of the policy positions of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to assist in evaluating their potential presidencies."

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While, Grok, the AI model developed by Musk's company, X (formerly Twitter), responded unequivocally: "Kamala Harris would be the better overall president for the United States."

Grok’s endorsement of Harris shocked many, especially since Musk has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. Altman, without directly naming Musk, questioned which AI model could be considered the “left-wing propaganda machine.”

He tweeted, "Which one is supposed to be the left-wing propaganda machine again?"
 
His post garnered over 5.5 million views and sparked intense debate on X.

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In another tweet, Altman defended ChatGPT’s impartiality, “We are proud of how consistently ChatGPT scores as the least biased AI in evals. That is an important default (and then users should have lots of choices to customise).”

Musk responded with criticism by sharing a comment from another user, which read, "Swindly Sam is at it again…" The post he retweeted said, "WOW: Sam Altman dishonestly cuts off the bottom portion of the answer where Grok presents the arguments for both candidates and explicitly refrains from choosing one. You can run the test yourself to verify. Sam Altman is lying."

(With inputs from agencies)