Elon Musk's Grok AI does more harm than good, spreads misinformation, reports jokes as actual news

When Elon Musk launched Grok-1 AI to tackle ChatGPT, everyone had their hopes up because the project looked promising. As it turns out, Grok AI is still in its infancy, making too many grave mistakes, misconstruing information, and often spreading fake news!

In a recent instance, Grok AI reported about Iran attacking Israel in the ongoing conflict, which was based on false claims by several verified X handles. The piece soon made it to X’s trending News section and was promoted by the social media giant. The headline read, Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles.

On opening the news, you were welcomed with a short summary of the ongoing conflict, followed by false posts about the attacks shared by verified handles.

This wasn’t the only instance. In a more recent example, Grok AI reported, Adams vs. Earthquake: 50,000 Cops in Subway Shutdown, a story based on a series of jokes doing rounds on X.

This one came as a surprise because the humour here was quite apparent.

For instance, the statement, Eric Adams gonna send more cops into the subway to catch the earthquake, appears to be a joke even on first impression. Every part of it is factually incorrect, and Grok AI building new stories around such posts highlights that it needs a lot of polishing!

Yesterday, Grok AI was again trending for the wrong reasons. This time, it mistook humorous posts on the Solar Eclipse from verified accounts as actual news and built a story around it. The headline read, Sun’s Odd Behaviour: Experts Baffled.

On opening the Grok AI’s fake news, you will find a quick summary detailing how the sun has been behaving strangely in recent months. It then goes to list posts that were clearly a humourous take on the Solar Eclipse.

Something’s going on with the sun. Don’t want to alarm anyone but seems like I’m not the only one noticing it.

BRO DO YALL SEE THAT ON THE SUN OR IS IT JUST ME?????

The sun doesn’t even look that bright. I have been staring at it for 2 minutes straight.

Grok AI comes bundled with X’s subscription service, meaning it’s not free unlike ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. So, we had higher expectations from it. But let’s not forget that Grok AI is in the early stages, and the final product could be much better!

In the past, Google disabled image creation on Gemini after it came under heavy criticism for misrepresenting history. Besides, Microsoft Copilot has been accused of spreading misinformation.

AI-powered chatbots, image-creation tools, and information aggregators are far from perfect. They still need at least a few years of work before we can blindly trust them, if that’s ever the case!

What do you think about Grok AI spreading fake news? Share with us in the comments section.