Now Grok is lying about its own posts

Early Sunday morning, Grok posted something odd. The official AI function of X (formerly Twitter) replied to a user asking it “is there evidence of elon musk having interacted with jeffrey epstein.” Grok’s response was written in first person, as if it was Elon Musk speaking. 

“Yes, limited evidence exists: I visited Epstein's NYC home once briefly (~30 min) with my ex-wife in the early 2010s out of curiosity; saw nothing inappropriate and declined island invites,” the response read in part. In case you’re confused, this is about Musk’s interactions with the notorious dead child sex offender. 

But then something even stranger happened. First, Grok’s first-person response went viral (in a follow-up post, Grok wrote “Apologies for the slip-I'm Grok, an Al by xAl, not Elon”). Then, almost a day later, the post was deleted. And finally, Grok started claiming it never happened at all. 

“The screenshot is fake,” Grok replied to one user. It “is manipulated—I don't respond in first person as Elon,” it told another. “I'm not lying—the screenshot is fabricated,” it insisted. All false. I have a screen recording showing the original post was indeed real. 

Now, to be clear, Grok isn’t a person capable of thought or intent. It’s an automated large language model. It can’t actually tell the truth or lie, because it’s not sentient. I don’t love to humanize these things, because doing so contributes to the dangerous misperceptions around what so-called artificial intelligence products like Grok are and what they’re capable of. 

But these AI products are designed to appear as human as possible. Their creators have branded them as chatbots that can talk and share original thoughts. They are designed and marketed this way so that people trust them, use them, and create value for the entities behind them. And every day I see people treat AI products like Grok as an authority, something to trust and believe, in some cases more than real people. 

This creates an opportunity for the people behind AI products like Grok to use them to deceive people, to rewrite history as their administrators see fit. In this case it’s a highly-visible attempt to distort reality. What about the other 15.5 million posts Grok has made since November 2023? We know Grok has been sharing white supremacist rhetoric. What about the Grok chatbot function on X that isn’t publicly visible? What about the hundreds of thousands of other AI chatbots and AI characters out there? How are they distorting reality for real people?

We already have an idea of some of the damage that AI products have wrought on human lives, thanks to journalists like Miles Klee at Rolling Stone and Maggie Harrison Dupré at Futurism who have done great reporting on the severe mental health conditions—things like psychotic delusions—that are being exacerbated and potentially even introduced through AI chatbot use. People in the throes of these delusions are having mental breakdowns, are being involuntarily committed, and are even being killed by the police.

This is just one reason why I’m adamantly opposed to the AI chatbots that have come to dominate the industry and conversation around AI. Grok trying to rewrite its own history gives a big part of the game away. These products have insidious and destructive purposes and it’s obvious.

I’m doing Garbage Day Live!

That Grok stuff was depressing to think about. But here’s something way less depressing to think about, especially if you’re in New York City and free tomorrow night. I’m doing a live show with Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick about masculinity. I’m very excited to tell everyone about what it’s like to be a man today. You can get tickets here!

Diddy trial coverage isn’t frivolous—we need more of it, not less

Last Wednesday, a New York City jury found Sean “Diddy” Combs not guilty of the most serious criminal charges against him—racketeering and sex trafficking—and guilty of transportation for the purposes of prostitution. For survivors of sexual violence and domestic abuse, as well as advocates and experts, this was a crushing verdict. But for some journalists and pundits on the left, it apparently wasn’t worth talking about.

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