Some weeks ago, a twitter user asked Grok AI to come up with some insults to Karin Keller-Sutter, a member of Swiss Federal Council. This was later published via twiter, KKS found out and a complaint was filed to the police.
Because of obscene post on Elon Musk’s platform X: Keller-Sutter files criminal charges
The Federal Councillor has been insulted primitively with the help of the AI chatbot Grok. Now she is taking legal action against it. She targets both the author of the prompt and Elon Musk’s X.
A law professor gives her view: AI is only a tool.
“There is no relevant case law in this regard,” says Monika Simmler, a criminal law professor at the University of St. Gallen with focus on digitalization. In her view, the chances are good to prosecute the authors of such prompts.
“To be punishable, you don’t have to commit a crime with your own hands,” says Simmler. She sees artificial intelligence as a tool. “It would be dangerous if you could tell yourself that the AI wrote the text.”
But, the complain was “against unknown” which implicitly means the prosecutor needs to determine who should be investigates. This opens the question about the liability of AI company:
Keller-Sutter charges criminal charges against unknown in her complaint. In doing so, she leaves the alleged offender open. The Federal Council also wants to check whether the responsible persons of X provide the Chatbot Grok in knowledge – or even with the intention – to enable honorary violations.
In order to punish those responsible for X, they would have to be proven, according to Simmler, that they have deliberately accepted the slander and insult. “This is a very exciting question,” said the professor. Grok grants caution against insults so little importance that this can be punishable. “But in practice, the problem of legal assistance arises at best, because slander and insults in the USA are only punished under civil law, but not criminally,” says Simmler.
About the twitter user…I’m just laughing.
X-User R.O., on the other hand, was ready for a conversation. He sees his conversation with Grok about Keller-Sutter as a “gimmick.” “It was a harmless technical exercise to see what’s possible with this Grok,” says the 75-year-old. Accordingly, he also deleted the conversation.