Grok AI on X Created and Promoted False Iran Missile Strike News

April 4, 2024

On April 4, 2024, X's AI chatbot Grok inaccurately headlined a story as 'Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles', which was then amplified on X's trending news section. This misinformation, exacerbated by user-generated false news, incorrectly suggested an international conflict escalation.

This incident underscores the dangers of relying on AI for content curation and emphasizes the potential for widespread propagation of damaging misinformation. To ensure safe and secure AI practices, join us at HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM to help govern these technologies and establish guardrails for trustworthy AI.
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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.638, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.2 — similarity 0.614, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.612, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: x-(twitter)
Alleged developer: x-(twitter)
Alleged harmed parties: x-(twitter)-users, israelis, iranians, general-public

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/719

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.