Grok misleads users on source of Gaza girl photopublished at 13:44 British Summer Time
13:44 BST
Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify senior journalist
Image source, AP
X’s AI chatbot Grok appears to have misidentified the source of an image of a young girl trying to access food in Gaza.
The image – captured by AP photographer Abdel Kareem Hana in Gaza City – shows a girl among a crowd of people holding out food bowls.
In response to a query about the source, Grok claimed the image “is not from Gaza. It depicts a Yazidi girl fleeing ISIS violence in Iraq/Syria, taken on August 13, 2014 at the border crossing in Fishkhabour.”
Several users then re-shared the photograph, accusing it of being a “lie” or “propaganda” and accumulating millions of views in the process.
Grok’s mistake – or hallucination – may stem from images taken in 2014 of a Yazidi girl in Fishkhabour who bears a resemblance to the one in the Gaza photo.
While the two images are clearly different to human eyes, the visual similarities seem to have led Grok to conflate them.
When challenged, Grok doubled down on its conclusion. But in a later post, which received significantly fewer views, the chatbot correctly acknowledged the , externalsource , externalof the photograph, external. Yet the misleading posts about the origin of the photograph remain on the platform.
We’ve contacted X for comment but have not yet received a response.