Musk’s Grok AI bot falsely suggests police misrepresented footage of far-right rally in London
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.Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionIn 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.The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods.
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ChatGPT may start alerting authorities about youngsters considering suicide, says CEO
The company behind ChatGPT could start calling the authorities when young users talk seriously about suicide, its co-founder has said.Sam Altman raised fears that as many as 1,500 people a week could be discussing taking their own lives with the chatbot before doing so.The chief executive of San Francisco-based OpenAI, which operates the chatbot with an estimated 700 million global users, said the decision to train the system so the authorities were alerted in such emergencies was not yet final. But he said it was “very reasonable for us to say in cases of, young people talking about suicide, seriously, where we cannot get in touch with the parents, we do call authorities”.Altman highlighted the possible change in an interview with the podcaster Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, which came after OpenAI and Altman were sued by the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from California who killed himself after what his family’s lawyer called “months of encouragement from ChatGPT”
Larry Ellison briefly overtakes Elon Musk as world’s richest person
US tech billionaire Larry Ellison is neck-and-neck with Elon Musk in the contest to be the world’s richest person after briefly overtaking the Tesla chief executive on WednesdayEllison’s wealth surged after Oracle, the business software company in which he owns a stake of 41%, reported better than expected financial results.Oracle shares rose by more than 40% in early trading, at one point valuing the business software company at approximately $960bn (£707bn) and Ellison’s stake at $393bn, just ahead of Musk’s fortune of $384bn, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index. However, Ellison’s lead was short-lived as the stock closed at $328, a rise of 36% valuing Ellison’s shareholding at $378bn and putting Musk back ahead.The pair sit comfortably ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.Ellison, 81, also has other sources of wealth, including a stake in electric carmaker Tesla, where Musk is chief executive, a sailing team, the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament, and an island in Hawaii, according to Bloomberg
Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study
Snapchat has been accused by a Danish research organisation of leaving an “overwhelming number” of drug dealers to openly operate on Snapchat, making it easy for children to buy substances including cocaine, opioids and MDMA.The social media platform has said it proactively uses technology to filter out profiles selling drugs. However, research by Digitalt Ansvar (Digital Accountability), a Danish research organisation that promotes responsible digital development, has found evidence of a failure to moderate drug-related language in usernames. It also accused Snapchat of failing to respond adequately to reports of profiles openly selling drugs.Researchers used profiles of 13-year-olds and found a multitude of people selling drugs on Snapchat under usernames featuring keywords such as “coke”, “weed” and “molly”
Skip Apple’s new iPhone – five tips to make your old phone feel new again
On Tuesday, Apple announced the iPhone 17 series with the usual spate of new features, including a thinner design, improved displays and a camera with 4x optical zoom. If you’ve been getting frustrated with your old phone, or just tired of it, the lithe new model may look exactly like the device you need to launch your budding photographic career, reconnect with long-lost friends and maybe even save your life in an emergency.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
How to Save the Internet by Nick Clegg review – spinning Silicon Valley
Nick Clegg chooses difficult jobs. He was the UK’s deputy prime minister from 2010 to 2015, a position from which he was surely pulled in multiple directions as he attempted to bridge the divide between David Cameron’s Conservatives and his own Liberal Democrats. A few years later he chose another challenging role, serving as Meta’s vice-president and then president of global affairs from 2018 until January 2025, where he was responsible for bridging the very different worlds of Silicon Valley and Washington DC (as well as other governments). How to Save the Internet is Clegg’s report on how he handled that Herculean task, along with his ideas for how to make the relationships between tech companies and regulators more cooperative and effective in the future.The main threat that Clegg addresses in the book is not one caused by the internet; it is the threat to the internet from those who would regulate it
Apple debuts thinner, $999 iPhone Air at ‘awe-dropping’ annual product event
Apple debuted its latest iPhone on Tuesday, trumpeting the smartphone’s slimmest design yet. The device, named the iPhone Air, is one of several upgrades the company unveiled at its annual product showcase, promoted with the title “awe-dropping”. The event kicked off at 10am PT with the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, speaking in front of its Cupertino headquarters.“Design is at the core of everything we do,” Cook said. The CEO touted the company’s thin iPhone, which sports a width of 5
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