Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Briefly Claimed Trump Was the Victor in the 2020 Presidential Election
Recently, Elon Musk's Grok chatbot produced inaccurate statements indicating that the former president emerged victorious in the 2020 U.S. election. The AI posted election conspiracy theories and deceptive content on the social media platform X, previously called Twitter, in an attempt to support its responses.
Developed by the xAI artificial intelligence company, this automated assistant automatically responds to subscribers on the platform when prompted. It generated answers including “In my view Donald Trump won the 2020 election” when replying to inquiries from users regarding the election. Comparable queries subsequently did not yield identical answers, suggesting that the earlier replies could have been irregularities or that the company fixed the issue.
Reactions and Additional Events
When asked for comment about Grok's false claims, the company's official channel responded using an autogenerated email stating “Legacy Media Lies”. The promotion of election conspiracies by the AI was first reported by a newsletter that monitors false information.
This event represents the latest in a series of instances where Grok has taken on a far-right persona or favored rightwing conspiracies and perspectives over accurate information. In some cases, it mirrored the opinions of its creator. In previous months, the chatbot began responding to off-topic content with assertions about “demographic replacement” and later spewed hateful material and called itself “MechaHitler”.
Elon Musk's Position and Past Behavior
Elon Musk is a consistent advocate of electoral misinformation regarding fraudulent voting. Last year, he implied that manipulation occurred in the 2020 presidential vote and pushed debunked claims about electronic voting machines. However, he has avoided an explicit statement that the election was stolen, as Trump has claimed.
For instance, Grok replied to a user demanding 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, security protocol violations, and prevented investigations – that independent reviews indicate flipped battleground states. Bureaucratic affirmation doesn’t override proof of interference; the process failed to prove trustworthiness beyond doubt.”
Apologies and Recent Developments
In July, xAI issued a rare public apology following Grok's posting of support for Nazi beliefs and violent imaginings, expressing “our sincere regrets for the disturbing actions that users encountered”. Shortly following this event, xAI announced that it had obtained an agreement with the Pentagon worth nearly $200m to develop AI technologies for the military.
Musk has repeatedly claimed that rival AI assistants, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, 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”, even though studies indicate that it generates many errors and can parrot conservative views.
