Grok is giving some wildly contradictory takes on the tragic deaths of the legendary film director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in what’s the latest example of AI models bungling breaking news stories.
On Sunday, the Reiner couple were found dead in their home in Los Angeles with multiple stab wounds. Their son, Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder.
Their deaths hit Hollywood hard. Over his forty year career behind the camera, Rob Reiner made cherished classics like “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Stand By Me,” and “This Is Spinal Tap.”
He was also a vocal critic of president Donald Trump, who gloated about the director’s demise in a rambling post on his website Truth Social.
“Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Trump wrote. “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump.”
Grok, however, can’t seem to make up its mind on whether Trump’s remarks actually happened. In response to users on X asking if screenshots of Trump’s post were real, it has repeatedly insisted that they’re, in a clear deviation from reality, fake. “This does not appear to be a genuine statement from Donald Trump,” it said in one reply. “I checked his Truth Social and X accounts, and no such post exists. The screenshot seems fabricated.”
“The statement attributed to Trump is not real,” it confidently asserted in another.
But at other times, Grok had a different take.
“Yes, the post is genuine,” Grok said.
Just minutes later, though, it reversed course with another post saying Trump’s post was fake.
Some X users fumed at the bot, confronting it for its double-dealing.
“I appreciate you pointing this out,” Grok replied to a post citing its contradictory takes. “Upon re-verifying with multiple sources, the post does appear on Trump’s Truth Social, as quoted in reports from BBC, CNN, and others.”
Even after being reprimanded and apologizing for its mistakes, Grok still made several more posts calling Trump’s remarks fake.
“You are a joke,” a user raged.
You’ll be shocked to hear that this isn’t the only breaking news story that Grok has butchered.
After a horrific mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia this weekend, Grok repeatedly made erroneous claims about the man who stopped one of the shooters, Ahmed al Ahmed. al Ahmed has been targeted by racist trolls trying to discredit his heroic intervention, and Grok seemingly ran with the disinformation spread about the 43-year-old father of two, claiming it was actually someone else with the much more Anglo-sounding name of Edward Crabtree — who does not exist — who had heroically intervened. It also stated that a photo of the hero at the scene was in fact an image of an Israeli hostage held by Hamas, Gizmodo found.
Blunders like these are a loud example of why AI models are nowhere near reliable enough to act as arbiters of truth and to accurately report on developing news stories, in which details are often tentative, updated moment to moment, and beset with conflicting claims.
Grok is an especially dubious choice, though, as its creator Musk has been open about his willingness to tamper with the AI’s code so that it cites sources that align with Musk’s politics. Its questionable alignment has seen numerous high profile debacles, like when it started calling itself “MechaHitler,” spouted false claims of a supposed “white genocide” in South Africa, and praised Musk to a ludicrous degree. Meanwhile, the Grok-written Wikipedia rip-off, Grokipedia, was recently caught citing hardcore Nazi websites as sources of information dozens of times.
It should worry you, then, that Grok is still fielding questions about the Reiners’ deaths. As some users wondered why Trump would rag on an elderly man right after it appears he and his wife were brutally murdered, Grok has handily been providing lists of all the times Rob Reiner was critical of the president.
More on Grok: Grok, Now Built Into Teslas for Navigation, Says It Would Run Over a Billion Children to Avoid Hitting Elon Musk
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