News@lemmy.world · 7 months ago

Elon Musk's X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X's AI chatbot Grok made it up.

mashable.com

cross-posted to:
technology@lemmy.world

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Elon Musk's X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X's AI chatbot Grok made it up.

mashable.com

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to

News@lemmy.world · 7 months ago

cross-posted to:
technology@lemmy.world

The AI-generated false headline was promoted by X in its official trending news section.

A shocking story was promoted on the “front page” or main feed of Elon Musk’s X on Thursday:

“Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles,” read the headline.

This would certainly be a worrying world news development. Earlier that week, Israel had conducted an airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing two generals as well as other officers. Retaliation from Iran seemed like a plausible occurrence.

But, there was one major problem: Iran did not attack Israel. The headline was fake.

Even more concerning, the fake headline was apparently generated by X’s own official AI chatbot, Grok, and then promoted by X’s trending news product, Explore, on the very first day of an updated version of the feature.

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7 months ago
They got it bumped to the top of google news for a few minutes before someone killed it.

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