Grok, the chatbot built by Elon Musk’s xAI and popularized on his social media platform X, appears to have repeatedly spread misinformation abouttoday’s mass shooting at Bondi Beachin Australia.
Gizmodo pointed toa number of posts where Grok misidentified the bystander —43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed— who disarmed one of the gunmen, and where it questioned the authenticity of videos and photos capturing al Ahmed’s actions.
In one post, the chatbotmisidentified the man in a photoas an Israeli hostage, and in another post brought upirrelevant information about the Israeli army’s treatment of Palestinians. In another post, itclaimeda “43-year-old IT professional and senior solutions architect” named Edward Crabtree was the one who actually disarmed a gunman.
Grok does appear to be fixing some of its mistakes. At leastone postthat reportedly claimed a video of the shooting actually showed Cyclone Alfred has been corrected “upon reevaluation.”
And the chatbot subsequentlyacknowledged al Ahmed’s identity, writing that the “misunderstanding arises from viral posts that mistakenly identified him as Edward Crabtree, possibly due to a reporting error or a joke referencing a fictional character.” (Thearticle in questionappeared ona largely non-functional news sitethat may be AI-generated.)
Source: Techcrunch
