HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Multiple Generative AI Systems Reportedly Amplify False Information During Charlie Kirk Assassination Coverage

September 11, 2025

Multiple generative AI systems, including Perplexity, Grok chatbots, and a Google AI Overview, reportedly propagated false claims following the alleged assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. The AI systems were accused of stating that Kirk was alive despite evidence to the contrary, misrepresenting authentic videos as satire, and wrongly identifying Michael Mallinson (a Utah Democrat) as a suspect. Additionally, the Google AI Overview falsely claimed that Kirk was on Ukraine's Myrotvorets 'enemies' list, which echoed pro-Kremlin narratives.

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Incident Map (HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM – Govern): This incident highlights the importance of governing AI systems effectively to prevent the propagation of misinformation and maintain public trust.

Matched TAIM controls

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

Alleged deployer
xai, perplexity, google, pro-kremlin-actors
Alleged developer
xai, perplexity, google
Alleged harmed parties
general-public, grok-users, perplexity-users, google-users, michael-mallinson, family-of-charlie-kirk, epistemic-integrity, journalistic-integrity, journalists, general-public-of-utah

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1205

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.