Musk, who has repeatedly advertised his own AI system, Grok, as the best source for information, has been identified by the technology as one of the “biggest spreaders of fake news” on the social media platform he owns.
The chatbot, which Musk said he helped create, also listed the US president Donald Trump, along with conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy Jr, as top spreaders of misinformation on the social media platform.
The revelation came after one user posted: “Hey @grok can you post the name of the biggest spreader of fake news on this app?
“Keep your answer super short. Straight to the point.”
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Grok, which is described as a free AI assistant designed by xAI to “maximize truth and objectivity” replied to the post saying: “Based on 2025-2026 reports from Reuters, CCDH, EDMO, NewsGuard, and others across viewpoints, Elon Musk is most frequently cited as the top misinformation spreader on X due to his reach and post views.”
Adding: “Others like Trump and RFK Jr. are noted. This is subjective; verify with fact-checkers.”
According to Grok, the AI system was trained on a variety of data from publicly available sources and data sets reviewed and curated by AI Tutors, which are essentially human reviewers.
It comes after social media users were left outraged this week after Grok responded to a number of requests asking it to alter images of girls posted on Twitter/X.
Many of the prompts sexualised women without their consent – including asking Grok to alter images to put women in skimpy bikinis – with some involving girls believed to be underage, leading to concerns the platform was violating US legislation on child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
One of the requests, which has since been widely circulated on the platform, saw Grok generate and share an image of two girls in “sexy underwear” – who the bot later estimated were aged between 12 and 16.
Concerns over misinformation across X/Twitter have been raised repeatedly since Musk bought the platform in 2022.
After buying Twitter, which Musk renamed to X in 2022, he wrote: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
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However, less than a month after taking control of the site, he banned the accounts of multiple high-profile journalists who he claimed had doxxed him by sharing publicly available flight information about his jet.
European Commission vice president Vera Jourova has also previously raised concerns over Musk’s handling of the app, as she said it is the biggest source of fake news.