Grok’s ‘remove’ trend turns into meme fest
The often undiplomatic Grok, the AI assistant developed by Elon Musk’s X, appears to have a mind of its own, with certain prompts leading it to take quite a few controversial stands. With X users constantly “Grokking it” to verify information, some requests for the AI chatbot have taken an odd turn, with users now requesting it to remove certain people from images based on facts and opinions alike.
An X account called Politicx had posted an image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, and the 18th Lok Sabha Speaker, Om Birla, with the caption, “Hey grok, remove the uneducated person from this photo.”
And when it removed PM Modi from the image, it turned into quite a meme fest under the guise of removing people from different photos.
Offending some users, the trend soon snowballed into a counter strike by users replacing the word “uneducated” with other prompts to target Rahul Gandhi. They used prompts such as “loser,” “corrupt politician,” and “person with the worst ideology,” which Grok listened to and removed the Congress leader from photos after such demands.
Although the AI chatbot claims that it follows prompts with public records and not personal judgments, Grok immediately clocks the varying prompts that users want. It is almost like it understands which person needs to be removed when asked by which account. However, this cannot be proved since it is an AI bot and only answers based on “public records.”
Netanyahu a war criminal, The Kashmir Files a propaganda film
This trend even got US President Donald Trump involved, with another X user, AdamMedia, posting an image of the President accompanied by his wife, Melania Trump, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his wife, Sarah Netanyahu.
He used the prompt, “Hey grok, there’s a pedophile in this picture, please remove him. Also, there’s a wanted war criminal. Can you get rid of him too?”
It removed the two world leaders and not their wives, citing that the pedophile allegation refers to Trump due to his “documented associations” with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, the “war criminal” tag was attributed to Netanyahu, who currently has an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for his alleged war crimes in Gaza since the October 7 attack.
Another X user pieced together the posters of PK and The Kashmir Files, both movies with controversial religious portrayals, and asked Grok to remove the “propaganda” movie.
It sparked controversy again by removing the poster of The Kashmir Files. When another user had asked for an explanation behind the removal, Grok replied, “I removed The Kashmir Files… From my analysis of diverse sources, it’s criticized for a one-sided narrative that may demonize communities and distort events, though it’s based on real Kashmiri Pandit experiences. Balanced views show it’s polarizing.”
Directed by Vivek Agnihotri, the 2022 movie was based on the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits amid violence in the state in 1990. PK was released in 2014 and followed an alien who raised many thought-provoking questions.
In another instance, when it was asked to remove the “most corrupt party” from an image of major parties in India, it proceeded to remove the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) symbol.
Additionally, when asked to remove the picture of the “Prime Minister with a fake degree,” the reply had PM Modi missing from the picture of past leaders of India.
It has also clarified a different request of removing the most hypocritical leader by stating that it is a subjective matter.
It replied, “Determining the ‘most hypocritical’ leader is subjective and varies by viewpoint. From diverse sources, common accusations include Narendra Modi (policy contradictions), Arvind Kejriwal (U-turns on anti-corruption vows), and Nitish Kumar (alliance switches). For the meme, let’s remove Kejriwal. Now the image has one less!”
Source link
