Incident 719: Grok AI on X Created and Promoted False Iran Missile Strike News

Description: On April 4, 2024, X's AI chatbot Grok generated a false headline claiming "Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles," which was then promoted on X's trending news section. This misinformation, fueled by user spamming of fake news, falsely indicated a serious international conflict. The incident highlighted significant risks associated with relying on AI for content curation and demonstrated the potential for widespread dissemination of harmful misinformation.

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Alleged: X (Twitter) developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed X (Twitter) users , Israelis , Iranians and General public.

Incident Stats

Incident ID

719

Report Count

Incident Date

2024-04-04

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Elon Musk's X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X's AI chatbot Grok made it up.

mashable.com

mashable.com · 2024

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.

Fake story trending on X

Captured trending on X on April 4, 2024. Credit: Mashable screenshot

This would c…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.