Elon Musk’s social media app X is accelerating the spread of conspiracy theories about election fraud with the help of artificial intelligence, boosting unfounded claims including two personal smears against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The questionable content is spreading in the “explore” section of the app, which claims to use Musk’s AI software, called Grok, to aggregate trending topics on social media. The information does not appear to have been verified by humans, and in several recent examples, it appears to repeat false or unsubstantiated claims as if they were true.
The feature is called “stories for you” and has a label indicating that it is in beta testing, meaning that it is an experience that is not available to all users. Each “story for you” consists of a stream of posts related to a current topic. On the desktop version of X, users can also see a one-paragraph summary of the topic written by the Grok software if they view the “story for you” history.
The feature’s placement in X’s explore section gives it significant digital space in the final weeks of the presidential election, in which Musk is supporting former President Donald Trump. His repeated amplification of misinformation and conspiracy theories related to the election follows a series of instances where Musk has personally shared similar ideas, both in live appearances and on his social media.
Over the past week, NBC News identified five “stories for you” that pushed baseless claims related to the election.
Every trending topic curated by Grok includes a disclaimer disclaiming responsibility for accuracy and urging users to check the facts for themselves: “Grok may make mistakes, check its results,” the disclaimer says.
On Monday, Grok uncritically repeated debunked allegations of wrongdoing linked to voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems. Grok produced a “story for you” titled “Public Scrutiny of Dominion Voting Systems,” which bundled messages accusing the company of “election rigging” and “fraud.” Dominion has previously denounced similar accusations as lies, and last year Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion.
Grok’s written summary of the online debate accused Dominion of “potentially stifling legitimate discussions about election security” with “legal threats.”
On Wednesday, Grok took up unfounded allegations of wrongdoing in Maricopa County, Arizona, reinforcing one X user’s claim that the county’s election workers are “corrupt” because of the speed at which they count the ballots.
And in a third election-related “story for you,” Grok this week spread the unsubstantiated claim that a voting machine in Tarrant County, Texas, was “flipping” votes. X’s AI software promoted posts alleging there were multiple examples, but only one voter came forward and his claims were not verified. Local authorities said there was no evidence behind his statement, suggesting he may have unintentionally lobbied the wrong candidate. They say he was able to vote successfully after reviewing his ballot.
Grok also defamed Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate. He created a “story for you” repeating unfounded allegations from X users that she used cocaine at the White House, and he created a “story for you” repeating allegations from which she allegedly attended parties hosted by Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is facing federal sexual abuse charges. Fact checkers said photo of Combs with fashion designer Misa Hylton has been modified has add Harris’ face.
Some of the posts aggregated by Grok have millions of views, although it is unclear whether the bulk of the views came before or after Grok included the posts in the trends feature.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has shared some of the same conspiracy theories amplified by his Grok software, including unfounded allegations of wrongdoing related to Dominion voting systems.
The richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg Billionaires IndexMusk invested nearly $75 million in a super PAC in support of Trump, and he crisscrossed the battleground state of Pennsylvania in an effort to register pro-Trump voters and send them to the polls, in using a daily million dollar giveaway to attract people’s attention. .
NBC News sought comment from X on its “stories for you” feature. Representatives for X did not respond to a list of emailed questions.
A spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems had no immediate comment on X’s “stories for you” feature, but noted a business website who defends the accuracy of the company’s systems.
Representatives for the Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
This feature has been problematic in the past. In July, summaries written by Grok reinforced false information about President Joe Biden, helping to spread wild conspiracy theories that Biden was suffering from an undisclosed medical emergency, might be dying, had been assassinated or would soon be murdered.
It’s work that was being done by human curators just two years ago, before Musk bought the app then known as Twitter. In 2015, Twitter management deployed selected trending topics as a way to help users understand the flow of information on the application. Twitter employees added verified context from traditional news sources such as the Associated Press and Reuters, with the aim of improving the quality of trending information.
But Musk, in one of his first acts after purchasing Twitter, eliminated jobs of human curators, and now the tech billionaire has delegated the task to his AI software.
Musk is a frequent critic of traditional news media, including the Associated Press and Reuters, and he has promoted X as the most trusted news source on the Internet despite the factual errors, conspiracy theories and debunked claims that appear there.
The the beta test of the “explorer” section of the application. In April, a Reddit user compared trending topic summaries to “rolls”brainless AI dice.” And in July, an X user posted a screenshot of “explore beta” with text affirming that Biden would be the next coach of the England national football team.
In recent weeks, dozens of users posted on “explore the beta” and the vast majority of messages have been negative. One user said it was useless, and another said it was “absolute garbage.” But several said they didn’t know of any way to opt out of the beta test.
It’s unclear how many people see the AI-created summaries. Some X users who browse the app’s trending topics only see ranked lists of popular topics, without AI-generated text. It’s also unclear whether X plans to expand Grok summaries from beta testing to standard functionality.