{"id":467180,"date":"2026-03-10T04:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T04:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467180\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T04:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T04:55:09","slug":"elon-musks-x-grilled-over-appalling-and-offensive-grok-posts-on-hillsborough-science-climate-tech-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467180\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk&#8217;s X grilled over &#8216;appalling and offensive&#8217; Grok posts on Hillsborough | Science, Climate &#038; Tech News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>X has been questioned by MPs over &#8220;the most appalling and offensive&#8221; AI posts about the Hillsborough disaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Over the weekend, Grok, X&#8217;s AI tool, was found to be <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/grok-posts-about-fatal-football-disasters-sickening-says-government-13516920\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">falsely blaming Liverpool fans for the 1989 disaster<\/a>, which led to the deaths of 97 fans, and using derogatory language about the city.<\/p>\n<p>A Sky News analysis also found highly offensive AI-generated posts containing profanities about Islam and Hinduism and disparaging the religions with racist vitriol.<\/p>\n<p>During a foreign affairs select committee hearing in Westminster on Monday, X&#8217;s head of global government affairs, Wifredo Fern\u00e1ndez, was asked about the recent spate of posts.<\/p>\n<p>          <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"sdc-article-image__item\" loading=\"lazy\" intrinsicsize=\"768x432\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/skynews-thornberry-emily_7187175.jpg\"   alt=\"Emily Thornberry MP. File pic: Reuters\" data-testid=\"article-image-image\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        Image:<br \/>\n        Emily Thornberry MP. File pic: Reuters<\/p>\n<p>Emily Thornberry MP, chair of the committee, described them as &#8220;the most appalling and offensive messages to Hillsborough victims&#8221; and asked Mr Fernandez about action taken by X.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I understand there were some unacceptable responses,&#8221; he told MPs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We actioned those posts with our policies and our engineering teams are investigating the issue to ensure it doesn&#8217;t happen again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The UK government previously described them as &#8220;sickening and irresponsible,&#8221; saying they go against British values.<\/p>\n<p>The offensive posts were part of a trend in recent days of users asking X to generate &#8220;vulgar&#8221; comments. It comes two months after the platform was threatened with being <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/grok-controversy-everything-you-need-to-know-about-xs-sexual-ai-image-scandal-13493882\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">banned in the UK<\/a> for producing non-consensual sexualised images of women and children.<\/p>\n<p>During the committee hearing, Liberal Democrat MP Edward Morello accused X of &#8220;peddling paedophilic images for profit&#8221; during the incident.<\/p>\n<p>        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/skynews-grok-xai_7129355.jpg\"  class=\"ui-video-player-poster-image\" alt=\"\" data-testid=\"video-player-poster-image\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    Share<\/p>\n<p>\n                UK targets AI chatbots after Grok outcry\n            <\/p>\n<p>Mr Fernandez told MPs the company had been &#8220;working diligently&#8221; since then to implement &#8220;robust guardrails&#8221; and make sure it doesn&#8217;t happen again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We agree that it was unacceptable,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Representatives from <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/topic\/tiktok-8490\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TikTok<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/topic\/meta-9868\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Meta<\/a> also appeared at the same committee hearing and were questioned by MPs over covert information campaigns on their platforms that could undermine democracy.<\/p>\n<p>All three social media giants said they had taken down scores of networks trying to interfere with other countries&#8217; democratic processes, with Russian, Iranian and Chinese most commonly behind the malicious campaigns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"X has been questioned by MPs over &#8220;the most appalling and offensive&#8221; AI posts about the Hillsborough disaster.\u00a0&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-467180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}