The billionaire continues using the X platform to proliferate falsehoods.

Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), is no stranger to controversy. Once celebrated as a visionary in the fields of space exploration, electric vehicles, and artificial intelligence, Musk’s influence is increasingly scrutinized for its darker side: his role in spreading misinformation to billions of people.

Just recently, he’s been caught spreading lies by Grok, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI – Musk’s AI startup since 2023, which runs on X (formerly Twitter), Musk’s social media platform since 2023.

Asked whether Musk has spread misinformation to billions of his followers, Grok replied: “Yes, there is substantial evidence and analysis suggesting that Elon Musk has spread misinformation on various topics, including elections, to a very large audience through his social media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter).”

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The chatbot provided several key points based on the referenced information, republished by NewsCafe in original quotes:

• Election Misinformation: Musk's posts related to elections, which have contained misleading or false claims, have amassed billions of views.

For example, an analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Musk's election-related misinformation had been viewed more than 2 billion times on X in the run-up to the 2024 election.

• Platform Influence: As the owner of X and the most followed user, Musk's posts receive significant visibility, often being seen by millions or even billions of users. This high engagement rate has led to widespread dissemination of misinformation.

• Community Notes Limitation: Despite the implementation of Community Notes, a feature designed to add context or corrections to misleading posts, some of Musk's misinformation has not been adequately addressed by this system, either due to its limitations or the rapid spread of the information before corrections can be applied.

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• Specific Instances:

o Musk has shared manipulated videos and debunked claims about voting processes, including allegations about non-citizen voting, which are common themes in misinformation narratives.

o His posts have sometimes led to real-world consequences, like affecting voter trust or complicating disaster relief efforts with false claims about government responses.

• Criticism and Legal Actions: Musk's actions have drawn criticism from election officials, misinformation researchers, and even led to legal actions or calls for accountability due to the scale and impact of the misinformation spread.

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This collective evidence from news analyses, research reports, and social media posts indicates that Elon Musk has indeed been a significant spreader of misinformation, impacting potentially billions of people through his platform and personal influence, said the billionaire’s AI child.

As Musk continues to use his platform to broadcast falsehoods, critics warn that his unchecked power in the digital age is not just problematic - it’s dangerous. The man who once dreamed of colonizing Mars now finds himself accused by a virtual assistant he branded as a genuine “truth-seeker” of destabilizing Earth’s most fundamental systems of truth and trust.

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