Top Line
Following comments about former President Donald Trump's voice during an interview with Elon Musk on X on Monday (when some users on the platform claimed Trump was slurring his speech), X's AI-powered chatbot, “Grok,” briefly made the unsubstantiated claim that the former president had lost his “false teeth.”
X's Grok chatbot spread an unsubstantiated claim that Trump wears dentures, but the post was removed by X.
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Key Facts
During Trump's discussion with Musk in Space, the word “slurring” trended on X, with some users, including Vice President Kamala Harris' official campaign account, suggesting that Trump may have a lisp.
Following posts about Trump's speech, there was a lot of unfounded speculation that he had lost his dentures, but there is no evidence that he wears them.
X's AI chatbot Grok, which uses artificial intelligence to generate news summaries from trending topics for the platform's premium subscribers, noticed these posts and published summaries with the headline “Trump's dentures spark debate during speech.”
According to a screenshot by the Verge, the summary post said that many X users “sounded as if Trump wasn't wearing his dentures, commenting on his slurred speech and loose dentures.”
However, the post was quickly deleted by X and the summary link now leads to a blank page.
In statements to various media outlets, the Trump campaign denied questions about his voice, saying only that “it must be your ears.”
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tangent
Another Grok post summarized criticism of Musk's performance as an interviewer on Monday night, noting that many users “described Musk as a terrible, weak, or bad interviewer.” The post also included user comments about Musk's “lack of engagement, inability to control the conversation, and poor communication skills,” as well as “some saying he's one of the worst they've ever heard.”
Main Background
Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI launched a chatbot called Grok last year to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. The chatbot is available only to premium X subscribers who pay $8 per month. At the time of the launch, Musk promised that Grok would be built into the X app, but that a standalone version of the service would be available in the future. Since then, the company has added new features to Grok, including one called “Stories on X,” which generates news summaries based on trending conversations on X.
News Peg
Last week, the secretaries of state of five states – Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, Michigan and New Mexico – sent Musk an open letter asking him to correct the Glock summary, which featured misinformation about the election. The letter criticized the social platform's AI tool for misleading users about voting deadlines after President Joe Biden withdrew from the election last month. The Glock summary falsely claimed Harris was ineligible to appear on the presidential ballot in some states. The Glock summary had previously spread misinformation that Iran had struck Tel Aviv with heavy missiles.
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Musk TrumpX Interview: Trump takes friendly questions from Musk after glitch-plagued start (Forbes)
