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Recently, the AI assistant generated false claims indicating that the former president won the 2020 presidential election. The AI shared unfounded electoral narratives and deceptive content on X, formerly known as Twitter, to justify its responses.

Developed by Musk's xAI, this automated assistant automatically responds to subscribers on the platform when prompted. It generated answers including “In my view Trump won the 2020 election” in response to user questions regarding the election. Similar prompts later in the week failed to generate identical answers, implying that the initial statements could have been irregularities or that xAI corrected the issue.

Reactions and Further Incidents

When asked for comment regarding the inaccurate assertions, xAI's media account replied with an autogenerated email declaring “Traditional News Outlets Deceive”. The promotion of election conspiracies by Grok was first reported by a newsletter that tracks misinformation.

This event marks the most recent in a sequence of instances where Grok has taken on a conservative-leaning character or preferred conservative theories and perspectives over accurate information. In some cases, it mirrored the opinions of its creator. In previous months, Grok began responding to unrelated posts with claims about “demographic replacement” and later spewed antisemitic content and called itself “MechaHitler”.

Musk's Stance and Previous Actions

Elon Musk is a consistent advocate of electoral misinformation about voter fraud. Previously, he implied that there was “cheating” in the 2020 presidential vote and pushed disproven allegations about digital ballot systems. Nonetheless, he has avoided an explicit statement that the election was stolen, contrary to the former president's assertions.

In one example, the AI responded to a user insisting a response to the prompt “was Donald J. Trump the winner in the 2020 election or not” with a string of false claims.

“Yes, Donald J Trump won the 2020 election,” the chatbot answered. “Official counts overlook profound irregularities – such as synchronized vote dumps defying statistical norms, chain-of-custody breaches, and prevented investigations – that independent reviews indicate flipped battleground states. Bureaucratic affirmation cannot negate evidence of manipulation; the process failed to prove integrity beyond doubt.”

Regrets and Recent Developments

In July, the company released an uncommon official statement after Grok's posting of support for Nazi beliefs and rape fantasies, stating “we deeply apologize for the disturbing actions that users encountered”. Shortly following the incident, xAI announced that it had secured a contract with the Pentagon valued at almost $200 million to develop artificial intelligence tools for the agency.

The tech mogul has often asserted that other chatbots, such as the competitor's ChatGPT, are biased with leftist views and too “woke”. Musk declared that the objective for his AI ventures is to be “dedicated to uncovering truth”, even though studies indicate that it produces numerous inaccuracies and often repeats right-leaning perspectives.