Original reporting in German: https://archive.is/gWLZL

[W]hat if Elon Musk hadn’t written the article himself? What if Welt am Sonntag had not printed a controversial guest article by one of the most powerful people on the planet, but an AI-generated text created in seconds? One that presumably agrees with Musk’s views, but whose argumentation may have been cobbled together from millions of freely available bits and pieces about Germany and the AfD on the internet?

If one asks [Musk’s] language model Grok to write an opinion piece for a conservative newspaper that shows why only the AfD can save Germany, the program spits out a text that is remarkably similar to Musk’s “Welt” article. In tone, argumentation, structure - and in many places literally. Like Musk’s op-ed, the AI-generated text begins with the words: “Germany is at a critical point - its future is teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse”. This is followed shortly afterwards in both texts by the formulation that has particularly angered many in Germany: the AfD, it says, is the last spark of hope for Germany. Dozens more overlaps follow, some of them verbatim.

Translated with DeepL.com