X's AI deemed an NBA player's poor performance to be vandalism

Last night, during the clash between the Sacramento Kings and the Golden State Warriors on the basketball court, star Klay Thompson disappointed with a subpar performance, not even scoring a basket on ten attempts, undermining his team's hopes of reaching the NBA playoffs.

Things have started to get complicated Grokthe artificial intelligence of X, the former Twitter.
The AI ​​bot saw fit to generate an alarming narrative that the NBA player was vandalizing homes in the Bay Area with the sound of bricks.

This misunderstanding arose from the literal interpretation of user posts discussing the player, confusing the concept of “shooting bricks”, used to describe shooting errors, with an actual act of vandalism.

X's AI feature, still in development, then confused Thompson's poor performance on the pitch with alleged criminal behavior, leading to massive distortion of facts on the social media platform.

Without foundations

The false narrative of facts quickly climbed the charts to reach fifth place on social media trends.

The Original message created by Grok read: “In an unusual development, NBA star Klay Thompson has been accused of damaging several homes in Sacramento, using bricks. Authorities are investigating these allegations after several residents reported damage to their properties, including the breaking windows caused by bricks. Klay Thompson has not yet made any statement regarding the allegations. These incidents have shaken the community, but fortunately no injuries have been reported. The motive behind this alleged vandalism remains unknown at this time.”

Before Elon Musk corrected or removed the statement, the unusual case highlighted how little Grok hesitated to sharing unsubstantiated information.

While a small disclaimer from meme about AI, expressing sarcasm and doubt about the erroneous claims made by the bot.

Out of size

It seems beyond dispute that Klay Thompson had no involvement in an unlikely brick-throwing act of vandalism, so there's no cause for alarm for anyone except perhaps Warriors fans.

This isn't the first case where X's AI feature has spread inaccurate headlines; In recent publications we have seen errors regarding NASCAR, professional wrestling and even the alleged death of OJ Simpson.

To many, Grok's latest oversight may seem like simply another episode in a series of common mistakes of AI tools still in development.
However, for individuals like Musk, who believes AI will surpass human intelligence by the end of next year, this episode should serve as a wake-up call.

It is perhaps for this reason that, when it comes to moderating his platform, the tycoon does not rely on AI, but rather is considering the introduction of a fee for new users.