Which artificial intelligence chatbot did a better job creating an image? One prominent CEO’s response may surprise you.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made a shocking accusation against ChatGPT during a Technology Business Programming Network (TBPN) interview last Thursday. He said that the subscription version of ChatGPT refused to modify an image of him and the chatbot’s parent company CEO Sam Altman. So, Benioff asked X owner Elon Musk’s AI chatbot to create the image instead.
Benioff said the chatbot refused the requested image because of an alleged “copyright infringement” given that both Benioff and Altman were wearing “conference necklaces” that Benioff wanted removed. He asserted that Grok, owned by free speech advocate Musk, had no problem creating the clean image of the two men that Benioff used to promote a partnership between Salesforce and OpenAI.
BREAKING: @Benioff used Grok for viral image with @sama pic.twitter.com/hVQEuDZH6C
— TBPN (@tbpn) October 16, 2025
The irony? In his X post, Benioff called ChatGPT—the AI he said refused to create the image for his X post—the “world’s best AI.”
It is unclear what ChatGPT meant when it refused the image prompt over an alleged “copyright infringement,” but a July court ruling addressed copyright claims as it pertains to AI systems ingesting copyrighted material from books to then create their own original outputs.
U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup wrote in his decision, "Authors’ complaint is no different than it would be if they complained that training schoolchildren to write well would result in an explosion of competing works. This is not the kind of competitive or creative displacement that concerns the Copyright Act. The Act seeks to advance original works of authorship, not to protect authors against competition." Meta also successfully fended off a lawsuit from major authors.
Given the Benioff image incident, Grok appears to already understand the court rulings, and is acting appropriately, while ChatGPT lags behind.
“No surprise here,” said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris. “MRC research shows that Altman’s ChatGPT has more AI-media contracts than all of its competitors combined, which suggests it has taken the leftist, anti-free speech approach on AI training and copyright. Grok, meanwhile, has taken a more pro-free speech approach.”
Explaining the free speech approach on AI training, Morris continued, “While ChatGPT does have a token contract with a right-leaning media source, News Corp, it overwhelmingly contracts with left-leaning media sources like The Associated Press, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian and others, all but ensuring that the lion’s share of its responses align with the leftist narrative. That’s censorship.”
MRC Free Speech America researchers conducted a study to identify the political bias of the media sources that AI chatbots use for training on. The results of the study are startling.
Researchers examined the known contracts between AI companies and media outlets to determine bias. AI-media contracts are almost exclusively left-leaning, with 59% being with left or left-leaning media outlets and only 5% of the contracts being with right-leaning media outlets. ChatGPT in particular held the most biased media contracts, with 21 contracts attached to left-leaning media outlets. MRC identified no media contracts for Grok.
Staff Writer Tom Olohan contributed to this report.
Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
