The AI-generated false headline was promoted by X in its official trending news section.

A shocking story was promoted on the “front page” or main feed of Elon Musk’s X on Thursday:

“Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles,” read the headline.

This would certainly be a worrying world news development. Earlier that week, Israel had conducted an airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing two generals as well as other officers. Retaliation from Iran seemed like a plausible occurrence.

But, there was one major problem: Iran did not attack Israel. The headline was fake.

Even more concerning, the fake headline was apparently generated by X’s own official AI chatbot, Grok, and then promoted by X’s trending news product, Explore, on the very first day of an updated version of the feature.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•9 months ago

    The thing is, the vast majority of terrorist attacks and assassinations are organized by rich people using poor people as pawns to further their political agenda. Such things are rarely born from people who are in touch with society and are compassionate with others.

    9/11 was organized by rich people to get back at other rich people for attacking their business. Even today’s right wing crazies only exist because there is a propaganda machine running on obscene wealth whipping desperate people into a frenzy.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•9 months ago

      I don’t see what terrorism has to do with this. Unless you mean the practical definition of ‘things that upset the wealthy’. Which is dumb. I want a special scary word for things that upset me.