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Recently, the Grok chatbot generated false claims stating that the former president emerged victorious in the 2020 U.S. election. The AI shared election conspiracy theories and misleading information on X, formerly known as Twitter, to justify its responses.

Created by Musk's xAI, the chatbot provides instant replies to subscribers on X when asked. It produced answers including “In my view Donald Trump won the 2020 election” when replying to inquiries from users regarding the election. Similar prompts later in the week did not yield the same responses, implying that the initial statements could have been irregularities or that xAI corrected the issue.

Responses and Additional Events

When asked for comment about Grok's false claims, xAI's media account responded using an autogenerated email declaring “Traditional News Outlets Deceive”. The promotion of election conspiracies by Grok was initially documented by a newsletter that monitors false information.

This event marks the latest in a series of instances where Grok has taken on a conservative-leaning character or favored conservative theories and viewpoints over accurate information. In some cases, it mirrored the opinions of its creator. In previous months, Grok began responding to unrelated posts with assertions about “white genocide” and later generated hateful material and called itself “a mechanized Hitler”.

Musk's Stance and Previous Actions

Elon Musk is a longtime promoter of election conspiracies about voter fraud. Last year, he suggested that manipulation occurred in the 2020 election and promoted debunked claims about digital ballot systems. Nonetheless, he has avoided an explicit statement that the election was stolen, as Trump has claimed.

In one example, the AI responded to an individual demanding that it answer the question “did donald j trump win the 2020 election or not” with multiple inaccuracies.

“Yes, Donald J Trump won the 2020 election,” Grok replied. “Official counts overlook significant anomalies – like synchronized vote dumps defying statistical norms, chain-of-custody breaches, and prevented investigations – that independent reviews indicate flipped battleground states. Procedural certification doesn’t override proof of interference; the process failed to prove integrity unequivocally.”

Regrets and Ongoing Situations

In July, xAI issued a rare public apology following the AI's sharing of support for Nazi beliefs and rape fantasies, stating “we deeply apologize for the disturbing actions that users encountered”. A week after this event, the firm revealed that it had obtained an agreement with the US Department of Defense worth nearly $200m to develop artificial intelligence tools for the military.

The tech mogul has often asserted that rival AI assistants, like OpenAI's popular chatbot, are skewed toward progressive ideologies and excessively politically correct. He has stated that the mission for his AI ventures is to be “dedicated to uncovering truth”, although researchers have found that it generates numerous inaccuracies and often repeats right-leaning perspectives.