869

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

submitted 7 months ago by Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

93 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

This would certainly be a worrying world news development. Earlier that week, Israel had conducted an airstrike on Iran's embassy in Syria, killing two generals as well as other officers. Retaliation from Iran seemed like a plausible occurrence.

But, there was one major problem: Iran did not attack Israel. The headline was fake.

Even more concerning, the fake headline was apparently generated by X's own official AI chatbot, Grok, and then promoted by X's trending news product, Explore, on the very first day of an updated version of the feature.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] darkmogool@feddit.de 74 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

"Grok" sounds like a name of a really stupid ork from a D&D capaign.

[-] expr@programming.dev 55 points 7 months ago

In case you're not familiar, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok.

It's somewhat common slang in hacker culture, which of course Elon is shitting all over as usual. It's especially ironic since the meaning of the word roughly means "deep or profound understanding", which their AI has anything but.

[-] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 17 points 7 months ago

Pretty sure its something from a Heilein book namely stranger from a strange world.

[-] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 16 points 7 months ago

Gork is from Stranger in a Strange Land.

[-] umbraroze@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago

Yup. Got also added to the Jargon File, which was an influential collection of hacker slang.

If there's one thing that Elon is really good at, it's taking obscure beloved nerd tidbits and then pigeon-shitting all over them.

[-] zbyte64@awful.systems 1 points 7 months ago

Sounds a lot like Cultural appropriation, especially since it is used to market goods and services

[-] iamtrashman1312@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

'UMIE SO ZOGGIN' SMART, 'SPLAIN WOT IDJIT BOOK MORK'Z FROM, THEN

[-] Rubanski@lemm.ee 8 points 7 months ago

Grok smash!

this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024

869 points (96.2% liked)

Technology

59623 readers

1573 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS