Grok is giving some wildly contradictory takes on the tragic deaths of the legendary film director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in what’s the latest example of AI models bungling breaking news stories.
On Sunday, the Reiner couple were found dead in their home in Los Angeles with multiple stab wounds. Their son, Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder.
Their deaths hit Hollywood hard. Over his forty year career behind the camera, Rob Reiner made cherished classics like “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Stand By Me,” and “This Is Spinal Tap.”
He was also a vocal critic of president Donald Trump, who gloated about the director’s demise in a rambling post on his website Truth Social.
“Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Trump wrote. “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump.”
Grok, however, can’t seem to make up its mind on whether Trump’s remarks actually happened. In response to users on X asking if screenshots of Trump’s post were real, it has repeatedly insisted that they’re, in a clear deviation from reality, fake. “This does not appear to be a genuine statement from Donald Trump,” it said in one reply. “I checked his Truth Social and X accounts, and no such post exists. The screenshot seems fabricated.”
“The statement attributed to Trump is not real,” it confidently asserted in another.
But at other times, Grok had a different take.
“Yes, the post is genuine,” Grok said.
Just minutes later, though, it reversed course with another post saying Trump’s post was fake.
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