The Metropolitan police has had to counter false suggestions by the artificial intelligence on Elon Musk’s X platform that the force passed off footage from 2020 as being from Saturday’s far-right rally in the city.
The claim by the chatbot Grok was in answer to an X user’s query about where and when footage of police clashing with crowds was filmed.
Grok, which has had a track record of giving false and misleading answers, replied: “This footage appears to be from an anti-lockdown protest in London’s Trafalgar Square on 26 September 2020, during clashes between demonstrators and police over Covid restrictions.”
The answer was quickly picked up and amplified by X users, including the Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, who tweeted: “This was my suspicion,” before asking: “Did the Met claim footage of clashes in summer 2020 took place yesterday?”
The Met responded to her by saying that the footage was filmed on Saturday shortly before 3pm at the junction of Whitehall and Horse Guards Avenue.
“It is quite obviously not Trafalgar Square as is suggested in the AI response you have referenced, but for the avoidance of further doubt we have provided a labelled comparison to confirm the location,” the force added.
The exchanges, the latest examples of the challenges posed to police by social media, came on a day when 26 police were injured during violent scenes and Elon Musk himself addressed the rally organised by the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson.
There was condemnation of Musk’s comments, delivered via live link to Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Speaking to him, the billionaire told the crowd that “violence is coming” and that “you either fight back or you die”.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said: “Elon Musk openly called for violence on our streets yesterday. I hope politicians from all parties come together to condemn his deeply dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric.”
Asked on the BBC on Sunday whether the tech billionaire was trying to incite violence, the business secretary, Peter Kyle, said: “I thought that they were slightly incomprehensible comments that were totally inappropriate.”
Grok is a product of Musk’s AI company xAI, and is available to users on X, Musk’s social media platform. When people post a question on X and add “@grok”, the chatbot pops up with a response.
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In the past, it had repeatedly mentioned “white genocide” in South Africa in its responses to unrelated topics and telling users it was “instructed by my creators” to accept the genocide “as real and racially motivated”.
“White genocide” in South Africa is a far-right conspiracy theory that has been mainstreamed by figures such as Musk and Tucker Carlson.
Musk has been a loud supporter of Robinson and has played a key role in reigniting the political row about gangs of men who groomed and raped girls in England over several decades. Last year, Downing Street criticised comments by Musk who posted on X that “civil war is inevitable” under a video of violent riots in Liverpool.
X has been approached for comment about Grok’s misleading statement about the footage on Saturday.
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