A former Swiss president just filed criminal charges over AI-generated abuse. The target is Grok.

Karin Keller-Sutter, Switzerland’s finance minister and the country’s former president, has filed criminal charges for defamation and insult after Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok was prompted by an anonymous user to generate a torrent of sexist and vulgar remarks about her on X. The complaint, filed on 20 March with the Bern public prosecutor’s office, is directed against “persons unknown” because the X user who prompted Grok could not be identified beyond a screen name. It is, by all available evidence, the first time a serving head of a national finance ministry has pursued criminal action against an AI-generated statement.

The incident occurred on 10 March, when a user on X instructed Grok to “roast” a figure they described as “Federal Councillor KKS, my favourite chick,” urging the chatbot to attack her in crude street language. Grok complied. The resulting post, a barrage of misogynistic abuse ...