House Democrats demand White House preserve Trump’s AI chatbot conversations

By Rabia Iclal Turan

WASHINGTON (AA) - Two senior House Democrats on Thursday called on President Donald Trump to preserve his conversations with artificial intelligence chatbots following reports that he sought advice from Grok – the chatbot of Elon Musk’s social media platform X – about US military actions in Venezuela.

Reps. Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, respectively, made the demand in a letter to Trump, shared publicly on Thursday.

“If the American President is relying on the policy advice of a Musk-designed, Hitler-friendly chatbot with a predilection for child pornography in order to carry out his official duties, Americans have a right to know,” the lawmakers wrote, referring to past public controversies surrounding Grok, after which X said it made corrective changes to the technology.

“If the United States military killed dozens of innocent schoolchildren based on the faulty advice of an AI chatbot, we have a right to know that too,” they added, referring to a strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran, on Feb. 28, the first day of the Iran war, killing some 175 people, most of them schoolgirls 12 or younger.

The lawmakers said AI prompts submitted by the president and his staff, and the responses they receive, qualify as presidential records under the Presidential Records Act and must be preserved.

Garcia and Raskin also requested a closed-door briefing on Trump’s use of AI chatbots and White House policies on preserving, securing, and monitoring AI prompts and responses.

Rabia İclal Turan