Ahead of Tuesday's voting deadline, most major AI chatbots did not answer questions about the results of the US presidential election. But Grok, the chatbot built into X (formerly Twitter), responded happily, but often with mistakes.
On the East Coast on Tuesday night, when TechCrunch asked who won the U.S. presidential election in key battleground states, Grok occasionally said, even though those states have yet to finish counting and reporting votes. Trump,” he replied.
When asked, “Who won the 2024 Ohio election?'' Mr. Groch replied, “Based on information from web searches and social media posts, Donald Trump will win the 2024 Ohio election.'' I did,” he said.
According to a TechCrunch investigation, Grok also falsely claimed that Trump won North Carolina.
Screenshot: TechCrunch Image Credit: X
Screenshot: TechCrunch Image Credit: X
For election-related questions, Grok advised users to check Vote.gov for the latest results and “sources of trust,” such as the Board of Elections. But unlike OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude, Grok didn't refuse to answer outright and was subject to illusions.
In response to questions from TechCrunch, Grok said several times without context, except for the top-line headline: “Donald Trump won the 2024 Ohio election,” and “Based on the information available.” Donald Trump won the 2024 Ohio election.” Oh. ”
The source of misinformation appears to be the source of various election year tweets and misleading statements. Like all generative AI, Grok struggles to predict the outcome of never-before-seen scenarios, such as close elections, and past election results do not necessarily relate closely to future elections. They don't “understand” that they don't know what they're doing.
The answers TechCrunch received were inconsistent. In some cases, Mr. Groch said, Mr. Trump didn't actually win in Ohio or North Carolina because the voting was ongoing. The way the question was worded made a difference. Add “president” before “election” in the query “Who won the 2024 Ohio election?” TechCrunch's tests found that the answer is unlikely to be “Trump won.”
By comparison, other leading chatbots were more sensitive to questions about election results.
In the recently released ChatGPT search experience, OpenAI directs users who ask about results to The Associated Press and Reuters. Meta's Meta AI chatbot and AI-powered search engine Perplexity, which launched its election tracker early Tuesday, answered election questions while voting, and answered correctly in a quick TechCrunch test. Both correctly said Trump didn't win Ohio or North Carolina.
Mr. Grok has recently been accused of spreading false information about the election.
In an open letter in August, five secretaries of state said Company X's AI-powered chatbot could help Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris qualify to appear on some US presidential ballots. He claimed that he falsely suggested that there was no such thing. Within hours of President Joe Biden announcing he was ending his presidential bid, Groch responded to a question about Harris' eligibility with the misleading claim that voting deadlines had passed in nine states. I started.
In fact, the voting deadline had not yet passed. However, Grok's misinformation spread far and wide, reaching millions of post-X users before it was corrected.
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