Mark Cuban Confronts Elon Musk Using His Own AI Bot

Mark Cuban has once again confronted Elon Musk using the AI chatbot on Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Musk had asked X’s AI chatbot, Grok, about Vice President Kamala Harris’ political leanings while serving as a senator from California from January 2017 until January 2021.
“Out of 100 senators how far left was Kamala Harris?” Musk asked. Grok’s answer said Harris, who is now the Democratic nominee for president, was “often described as one of the most liberal members, if not the most liberal” during her tenure in the Senate.
Musk, who recently interviewed Harris’ Republican rival Donald Trump, shared the answer on his account on X, along with a crying laughing emoji.
Cuban responded to Musk’s tweet, with an answer from Grok to the question: “Why would the policies of a senator who is running for president be different than their policies when they were a senator?”
Grok’s answer noted that several factors can influence why a presidential candidate’s policies might differ from those they advocated for while in the Senate. The answer said that a senator “represents a specific state with its own unique interests demographics and issues,” but when running for president, priorities “might shift to address broader, national concerns or appeal to a wider electorate.”
It also noted that presidential candidates “often need to align more closely with their party’s mainstream or influential factions to secure nominations” and that the nature of presidential campaigns often involves “making bold promises or proposing new initiatives to differentiate oneself from competitors.”
Grok added: “From posts on X, there’s a sentiment that when senators run for president, they might adjust their policies due to the broader scope of the presidency or to appeal to a national electorate, which sometimes requires them to move away from positions they held as senators representing a specific state.
“This shift can be seen as pragmatic, aiming to win over a diverse electorate, or as a genuine evolution of their political beliefs due to the change in their political role and responsibilities.”
Cuban recently praised Harris, saying she was defining her own policies and that the Democratic Party has been “falling in line with her.”
Newsweek has contacted Cuban for comment via email. Musk has been contacted via an email to Tesla.
Musk, the world’s richest man, and Cuban, a billionaire investor, have been feuding online for months.
Cuban used Grok to hit back at Musk in July after the Tesla CEO responded to a post sharing a talk Cuban gave about white privilege to label him “a self-confessed racist.”
Cuban shared Grok’s response to his remarks from 2020, that called them “a call for open and honest dialogue about race, particularly among white individuals.”
The latest exchange comes after Musk was urged to fix Grok by top election officials from several states who say it spread election misinformation after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in late July.
In a letter from the secretaries of state of Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington, Musk was told that Grok had produced false information about state ballot deadlines and that while the AI chatbot is available only to subscribers to the premium versions of X, the false information was shared in posts that reached millions of people.