X's Grok AI amplifies election conspiracy theories without fact-checking
X's Grok AI amplified election conspiracy theories and false claims about voting companies through its 'stories for you' trending topics feature without human fact-checking. NBC News identified five instances in late October 2024 where Grok spread baseless election-related claims, including unfounded accusations against Dominion Voting Systems and Maricopa County election workers.
What happened
X's AI software Grok aggregates trending topics in the app's 'stories for you' feature, which appears in the explore section. NBC News identified five 'stories for you' in late October 2024 that pushed baseless election-related claims without human fact-checking.
On Monday, Grok produced a 'story for you' titled 'Public Scrutiny of Dominion Voting Systems' that aggregated posts accusing the company of 'election rigging' and 'fraud'. On Wednesday, Grok spread unfounded claims of wrongdoing in Maricopa County, Arizona, boosting a claim that county election workers are 'corrupt' because of ballot-counting speed.
Reported impact
The dubious content is given prominent placement in X's explore section during the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election. The feature repeats false or unsubstantiated claims as if they were true, with only a disclaimer that 'Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs' and no human fact-checking.
Index analysis
Grok's written summaries of election topics present unsubstantiated allegations without verification. For the Dominion topic, Grok accused the company of 'potentially stifling legitimate discussions on election security' through 'legal threats,' despite Dominion having previously denounced similar accusations as lies and Fox News paying a $787.5 million settlement to Dominion for defamation.
Governance controls
Each trending topic curated by Grok includes a warning disclaiming responsibility for accuracy and telling users to check facts independently. The 'stories for you' feature is labeled as a beta test experiment not available to all users.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.