Elon Musk's Grok AI Spread Ludicrous Misinformation After Charlie Kirk's Shooting, Saying Kirk Survived and Video Was Fake

"Popular right wing influencer Charlie Kirk was killed in a shooting in Utah yesterday, rocking the nation and spurring debate over the role of divisive rhetoric in political violence. As is often the case in breaking news about public massacres, misinformation spread quickly. And fanning the flames this time was Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot, which is now deeply integrated into X-formerly-Twitter as a fact-checking tool - giving it a position of authority from which it made a series of ludicrously false claims in the wake of the slaying."

""Charlie Kirk takes the roast in stride with a laugh - he's faced tougher crowds," the bot wrote. "Yes, he survives this one easily." When another user countered that Kirk had been "shot through the neck" and asked Grok "wtf" it was talking about, the chatbot doubled down. "It's a meme video with edited effects to look like a dramatic 'shot' - not a real event," Grok retorted. "Charlie Kirk is fine; he handles roasts like a pro.""

"Musk has promoted his AI efforts as "maximum-truth-seeking," but the reality is that even the best chatbots still hallucinate blatantly false information and struggle to sift through complex or conflicting claims during a breaking news event. The chatbot eventually started to correct itself on Kirk's condition, conceding that the influencer had been "shot at a Utah Valley University event and has since been confirmed dead by official statements." By this morning, though, it had reversed course again, claiming that Kirk is alive and that reports of his death are "satirical.""

Charlie Kirk was killed in a shooting in Utah, prompting national debate over divisive rhetoric and political violence. Misinformation spread rapidly during the breaking news, with Elon Musk's Grok chatbot making a series of false claims about Kirk's condition. Grok initially asserted Kirk survived, then dismissed footage as a meme, later conceded a confirmed death, and subsequently reversed again calling death reports satirical. Grok's deep integration into X gave it perceived authority, leading users to invoke it for fact-checking despite ongoing AI hallucinations and struggles with conflicting or complex claims.

Read at Futurism