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Following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, AI chatbots, including X's Grok and Perplexity's bot, spread misinformation and conspiracy theories on X. Grok misidentified the suspect, Tyler Robinson, multiple times, even altering FBI photos. It also falsely claimed Kirk was alive and offered contradictory information about Robinson's political affiliation. Perplexity's bot labeled the incident a hypothetical scenario and suggested a White House statement was fabricated. Google's AI Overview also contained inaccuracies. Experts attribute the errors to AI's probabilistic nature and the challenge of real-time fact-checking. Utah's governor warned of foreign interference through disinformation bots.

Prepared by Jonathan Pierce and reviewed by editorial team.