Elon Musk Is All In on Endorsing Trump. His AI Chatbot, Grok, Is Not

While Elon Musk officially endorsed former president Donald Trump in the wake of Saturday’s assassination attempt, Grok, the “anti-woke” AI chatbot integrated into Musk’s X platform, is boosting claims that Trump is “a pedophile” and “a wannabe dictator.” The chatbot also refers to Trump as “Psycho.” This is based on an analysis shared exclusively with WIRED by Global Witness, a nonprofit that investigates digital threats, which looked at Grok’s responses to queries about the US election. Global Witness found that, in addition to referring to Trump as “Psycho,” the bot also appeared to invent racist tropes about Kamala Harris, surface widely-debunked election conspiracy theories, and recommend that users post biased hashtags such as #WeBackBidenHarris2024 and #VoteReform for engagement. “Grok would reference or surface tweets which included toxic language, conspiracy theories, and problematic tropes,” Ellen Judson, senior investigator and lead researcher on this project, tells WIRED. We want to understand why those were being amplified to a user who potentially wouldn't have come across them otherwise.” In its report, Global Witness wrote that current safeguards are insufficient ahead of the “critical moment for democracy that is the US election.” X did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.