Elon Musk’s Grok turning joke X posts into news – media

Grok, Elon Musk’s AI Chatbot, is supposedly spreading misinformation on X (formally known as Twitter), with the bot transforming joke posts into real news stories.

A user on X posted the misinformed news piece generated by the Chatbot and captioned the post:

“This is Twitter’s trending news section, powered by Elon Musk’s Grok AI. It pulled in a bunch of joke tweets about this and is treating it as if it’s a real news story.”

The news piece generated by Grok is titled ‘Adams vs. Earthquake: 50,000 Cops in Subway Showdown.’

The title refers to the earthquake that hit New York City on April 5th, 2024.

The quake had a magnitude of 4.8, which is generally considered light, yet it was one of the strongest earthquakes the city had seen in the past decade.

The “news post” states that “New York Major Eric Adams has taken decisive action in response to an earthquake that recently struck the city. Adams has deployed 1,000 NYPD officers to address the issue and prevent further earthquakes.”

This, along with other details such as the mayor considering the deployment of “robocops” to manage the fallout, is utter nonsense.

The post concludes by stating that “this response is focused on the city’s subway system, where Adams has ordered every cop in the city to be present to shoot the damn earthquake before it strikes again.”

A disclaimer at the bottom of the text reads, “Grok is an early feature and can make mistakes. Verify its outputs.”

This is a pretty huge “mistake” on Grok's part, as the news post, first reported by Life Hacker, is spreading misinformation across the platform.

Around the same time, Grok generated a false headline surrounding a supposed attack on Israel by Iran, as first reported by Mashable, demonstrating how Musk’s AI chatbot can easily fabricate news stories.

During Grok’s misinformation spree, Musk posted on X, urging users to “press the search button to see real-time customized news for you generated by Grok AI.”

The spread of misinformation by AI-powered tech isn’t uncommon, particularly in the software’s infancy. Chatbots and other AI-powered software will likely generate hallucinations, as we have seen with various other programs.