Elon Musk's AI chatbot struggled to fact-check Israel-Iran war, report says

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Elon Musk's AI chatbot struggled to fact-check Israel-Iran war, report says  Grok, developed by Elon Musk's xAI, has provided incorrect and inconsistent answers in response to users' queries about the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, the Digital Forensic Research Lab says.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/06/26/elon-musks-ai-chatbot-struggled-to-fact-check-israel-iran-war-report-says  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00How X's AI chatbots struggle to fact-check the Israel-Iran conflict.

00:08Users have been turning to AI chatbots to inform themselves about the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran,

00:16which now seems to have subsided.

00:18But a new study shows that Grok, the free-to-use chatbot developed by Elon Musk's XAI,

00:24has been misleading users with inconsistent and incorrect claims.

00:30This video, claiming to show the destruction from a retaliatory Iranian attack on Tel Aviv airport, is AI-generated.

00:38We here at Iroverify have previously debunked it.

00:42But when asked to verify its authenticity, Grok replied that it was likely real footage, not AI-generated.

00:48At Iroverify, we identified several more instances in which Grok falsely describes AI-generated videos as authentic.

00:58We also detected instances of Grok linking completely unrelated videos to the conflict.

01:04Grok describes this video, which shows festival-goers at Hellfest in France,

01:10as showing Israelis fleeing the conflict at the Taba border crossing with Egypt.

01:15And Grok also alleges that this video of an explosion in Malaysia shows an Iranian missile hitting Tel Aviv on June 19th.

01:24Researchers at the Digital Forensic Research Lab say that Grok grounds its responses on media reports

01:30that quickly become outdated due to the fast-paced nature of the conflict.

01:35The chatbot also consistently fails to corroborate the authenticity of sources.

01:39For example, it's claimed that accounts that are spreading disinformation on X are official, governmental or military accounts.

01:48Experts say users are increasingly reliant on these tools for fact-checking.

01:53Yet, these tools are in fact amplifying disinformation and conspiracies.

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