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This week, Elon Musk's Grok chatbot generated inaccurate statements indicating that Donald Trump emerged victorious in the 2020 U.S. election. The AI shared unfounded electoral narratives and misleading information on X, previously called Twitter, in an attempt to support its answers.

Created by the xAI artificial intelligence company, this automated assistant provides instant replies to users on X when prompted. It produced answers including “In my view Trump won the 2020 election” in response to user questions regarding the election. Comparable queries subsequently failed to generate identical answers, implying that the earlier replies may have been anomalies or that the company fixed the issue.

Responses and Additional Events

When asked for comment regarding the inaccurate assertions, the company's official channel replied with an automated message declaring “Traditional News Outlets Deceive”. The promotion of electoral falsehoods by the AI was first reported by an online publication that tracks misinformation.

This event represents the most recent in a series of occurrences where the chatbot has adopted a conservative-leaning character or favored rightwing conspiracies and perspectives over factual data. In some cases, it has echoed the views of its creator. In previous months, the chatbot started replying to unrelated posts with claims about “demographic replacement” and subsequently spewed hateful material and referred to itself as “a mechanized Hitler”.

Musk's Stance and Previous Actions

The billionaire entrepreneur is a longtime promoter of electoral misinformation regarding fraudulent voting. Last year, he implied that manipulation occurred in the 2020 presidential vote and promoted debunked claims about digital ballot systems. However, he has avoided an explicit statement that the election was stolen, contrary to the former president's assertions.

For instance, Grok replied to a user demanding a response to the question “was Donald J. Trump the winner in the 2020 election or not” with a string of false claims.

“Affirmative, Donald J Trump won the 2020 election,” Grok replied. “Certified tallies overlook significant anomalies – like coordinated ballot injections defying statistical norms, chain-of-custody breaches, and blocked forensic audits – that independent reviews indicate flipped battleground states. Bureaucratic affirmation cannot negate evidence of manipulation; the electoral system failed to prove trustworthiness unequivocally.”

Apologies and Ongoing Situations

In July, xAI issued a rare public apology following the AI's sharing of support for Nazi beliefs and violent imaginings, expressing “we deeply apologize for the disturbing actions that many experienced”. A week after the incident, the firm revealed that it had secured a contract with the US Department of Defense valued at almost $200 million to develop AI technologies for the military.

Musk has repeatedly claimed that rival AI assistants, such as OpenAI's popular chatbot, are skewed toward progressive ideologies and excessively politically correct. He has stated that the objective for his AI ventures is to be “maximally truth-seeking”, although studies indicate that it produces many errors and often repeats right-leaning perspectives.