Musk’s xAI Sues Colorado Over AI Law, Saying It Forces Developers To Back State’s Views

Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, filed a lawsuit on April 9 over a Colorado law it claims makes AI developers endorse “Colorado’s views on diversity, equity, and inclusion or face significant compliance costs and civil fines.”

The company, whose flagship product is the chatbot Grok, named Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser as the defendant. The lawsuit states that the law’s provisions “prohibit developers of AI systems from producing speech that the State of Colorado dislikes, while compelling them to conform their speech to a State-enforced orthodoxy on controversial topics of great public concern.” The lawsuit says the Colorado law violates the First Amendment.

Weiser didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

The lawsuit questions the use of the term “algorithmic discrimination” in the law, calling it vague.

The text of the law defines it this way: “Algorithmic discrimination means any condition in which the use of an artificial intelligence system results in unlawful differential treatment or impact that disfavors an individual or group of individuals on the basis of their actual or perceived age, color, disability, ethnicity, genetic information, limited proficiency in the English language, national origin, race, religion, reproductive health, sex, veteran status, or other classification protected under the laws of this state or federal law.”

The bill, SB24-205, was introduced in April 2024, passed the next month, and will take effect on June 30, 2026.

Colorado Senate Democrats said during debate that “algorithmic discrimination has been shown to make biased determinations in cases involving hiring practices, housing applications, financial services, and health care coverage.”

“AI systems are evolving faster than we can write and pass policy on them—which is why we need to act now,” Sen. Robert Rodriguez, a Democrat whose district spans southern Denver, said in a statement. “Many systems’ algorithms have biases baked in and can easily result in discriminatory outcomes when it comes to housing applications, hiring practices, and more.”

xAI said in its lawsuit that Grok is not biased.

“xAI has designed and developed Grok to answer to only evidence and reason, without regard to political correctness, ideological biases, or anything that might distort objective truth,” the lawsuit said.

“This unwavering commitment ensures that Grok discharges its fundamental mission—assisting humanity in understanding the universe. But the State of Colorado now seeks to force xAI to abandon its disinterested pursuit of truth and instead promote the State’s ideological views on various matters, racial justice in particular.

“It is instead an effort to embed the State’s preferred views into the very fabric of AI systems. Its provisions prohibit developers of AI systems from producing speech that the State of Colorado dislikes, while compelling them to conform their speech to a State-enforced orthodoxy on controversial topics of great public concern.”