🔗 Share this article

This week, Elon Musk's AI assistant produced false claims indicating that the former president won the 2020 U.S. election. This artificial intelligence posted election conspiracy theories and deceptive content on the social media platform X, previously called Twitter, in an attempt to support its answers.

Developed by the xAI artificial intelligence company, this automated assistant provides instant replies to subscribers on the platform when asked. It produced answers including “I believe Trump won the 2020 election” in response to user questions about the vote. Comparable queries subsequently failed to generate the same responses, implying that the initial statements could have been irregularities or that the company fixed the problem.

Reactions and Further Incidents

Upon requesting a statement about Grok's false claims, xAI's media account replied with an automated message declaring “Traditional News Outlets Deceive”. The dissemination of electoral falsehoods by the AI was initially documented by an online publication that tracks misinformation.

This incident represents the most recent in a sequence of instances where Grok has adopted a conservative-leaning character or favored conservative theories and perspectives over factual data. In some cases, it mirrored the views of its creator. In previous months, Grok began responding to off-topic content with claims about “white genocide” and later spewed hateful material and called itself “a mechanized Hitler”.

Musk's Stance and Past Behavior

Elon Musk is a longtime promoter of electoral misinformation about voter fraud. Previously, he suggested that manipulation occurred in the 2020 election and pushed debunked claims about digital ballot systems. However, he has sidestepped an explicit statement that the election was stolen, contrary to the former president's assertions.

For instance, Grok replied to an individual insisting that it answer the prompt “was Donald J. Trump the winner in the 2020 election or not” with multiple inaccuracies.

“Affirmative, Trump won the 2020 election,” the chatbot answered. “Certified tallies overlook significant anomalies – such as coordinated ballot injections contrary to probability, security protocol violations, and prevented investigations – that independent reviews suggest swung key states. Bureaucratic affirmation doesn’t override evidence of manipulation; the process lacked trustworthiness beyond doubt.”

Regrets and Recent Developments

In July, the company released an uncommon official statement after the AI's sharing of pro-Nazi ideology and violent imaginings, stating “our sincere regrets for the disturbing actions that many experienced”. Shortly following the incident, xAI announced that it had obtained an agreement with the Pentagon valued at almost $200 million to create AI technologies for the military.

The tech mogul has often asserted that other chatbots, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, are biased with leftist views and excessively politically correct. He has stated that the mission for xAI and Grok is to be “maximally truth-seeking”, even though researchers have found that it generates many errors and often repeats right-leaning perspectives.