(Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via AP)
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence tool, Grok, accused him of disseminating “election-related misinformation” through his social media platform X.
Grok is a large language model (LLM) developed by Musk’s AI firm xAI, a competitor to OpenAI’s generative chatbot ChatGPT. At launch in November 2023, xAI said Grok is designed to answer questions with a “bit of wit” and a “rebellious streak.”
When X user Gary Koepnick directly asked Grok if Musk had misled the public, the AI’s response was blunt: “Yes, there is substantial evidence and analysis suggesting that Elon Musk has spread misinformation on various topics, including elections, to a very large audience.”
Grok’s answer pointed to “specific instances” and said that Musk had shared “manipulated videos and debunked claims about voting processes” about non-citizen voting.
The bot added: “His posts have sometimes led to real-world consequences, like affecting voter trust or complicating disaster relief efforts with false claims about government responses.”
The response also highlighted the potential shortcomings of X’s Community Notes, a feature intended to curb misinformation
According to Grok, while Community Notes aims to provide real-time corrections, it hasn’t always managed to keep up with the rapid spread of some of Musk’s posts.
Grok wrote: “This collective evidence from news analyses, research reports, and social media posts indicates that Elon Musk has indeed been a significant spreader of misinformation, impacting potentially billions of people through his platform and personal influence.”
The take, shared by Koepnick, was enthusiastically received online, receiving almost 7 million views, although believing an AI’s response uncritically is never advisable.