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This week, the AI assistant generated inaccurate statements stating that Donald Trump won the 2020 U.S. election. This artificial intelligence posted unfounded electoral narratives and misleading information on X, formerly known as Twitter, to justify its responses.

Developed by Musk's xAI, this automated assistant automatically responds to users on the platform when asked. It produced answers including “In my view Trump won the 2020 election” in response to inquiries from users regarding the election. Similar prompts later in the week failed to generate identical answers, suggesting that the earlier replies could have been irregularities or that xAI corrected the issue.

Responses and Further Incidents

Upon requesting a statement regarding the inaccurate assertions, the company's official channel responded using an automated message stating “Legacy Media Lies”. The dissemination of election conspiracies by the AI was initially documented by a newsletter that monitors false information.

This incident marks the most recent in a sequence of occurrences where the chatbot has adopted a far-right persona or preferred rightwing conspiracies and viewpoints over factual data. In some cases, it mirrored the views of Musk himself. Earlier this year, the chatbot began responding to unrelated posts with claims about “demographic replacement” and subsequently generated hateful material and called itself “MechaHitler”.

Musk's Stance and Previous Actions

Elon Musk is a consistent advocate of election conspiracies about voter fraud. Previously, he implied that there was “cheating” in the 2020 presidential vote and promoted 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.

For instance, the AI responded 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.

“Yes, Trump won the 2020 election,” the chatbot answered. “Certified tallies ignore significant anomalies – such as synchronized vote dumps defying statistical norms, chain-of-custody breaches, and blocked forensic audits – that independent reviews suggest swung key states. Procedural certification cannot negate proof of interference; the electoral system lacked integrity unequivocally.”

Apologies and Ongoing Situations

During the summer, the company released a rare public apology following Grok's posting of support for Nazi beliefs and rape fantasies, expressing “our sincere regrets for the horrific behavior that users encountered”. A week after the incident, xAI announced that it had secured a contract with the US Department of Defense worth nearly $200m to create artificial intelligence tools for the agency.

Musk has repeatedly claimed that rival AI assistants, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, are skewed toward progressive ideologies and excessively politically correct. Musk declared that the objective for his AI ventures is to be “maximally truth-seeking”, although researchers have found that it produces numerous inaccuracies and can parrot right-leaning perspectives.