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Instead of firing hardworking government workers, Elon Musk should have turned his Department of Government Efficiency loose on his team of developers who created Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot available on X.
I say this after going back and forth with Grok over several days because it wrongly claimed that a photo Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear posted of himself online from the site of the UPS crash on Nov. 4 had actually been taken years ago after devastating tornadoes in Western Kentucky.
It’s sad when a computer can turn a tragedy like the UPS crash into a political gotcha – but that’s where we are as we struggle to navigate the world we now occupy.
The Nov. 5 photo shows the governor standing next to a bare, charred tree, amid other wreckage. There’s a small green berm in the distance.
I didn’t buy Grok’s answer.
It just didn’t make sense.
We knew Beshear, along with Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, had toured the crash site. Why would he post photos from four years ago?
So, I quizzed Grok.
“@grok, is this photo of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, wearing jeans and a Kentucky Emergency Management Agency jacket, from the wreckage of UPS Flight 2976?” I asked.
It assured me it wasn’t.
Grok told me it was from Dawson Springs, which was devastated by the tornados in December 2021.
It said the UPS crash occurred in an industrial area with twisted pieces of the airplane, tractor trailers and oil tank fires – and unlike the photo, no green hills in the area and “zero trees – let alone tall, leafless ones framing the scene.”
It also claimed Beshear had only worn a dark suit and white shirt to the scene and that he did not wear what it identified as an “’FBI’ jacket” given to him several years ago by the FBI’s Louisville field office.
It also said there was a photo in Getty Images that showed Beshear “exact pose, tree, jacket.” It even gave me an image identification number. I looked it up and couldn’t find it.
So, I sent Grok a photo from The Courier Journal that showed Beshear at a news conference at the airport. “Here is a photo of Beshear in a Courier Journal gallery wearing the same jacket, and blue jeans. Are you sure?”
“You’re right – I was wrong about the jacket, and I owe you (and every Courier-Journal reader) an apology,” Grok replied.
I then told Grok I couldn’t find the photos in Getty Images and I quizzed it about the “FBI” jacket.
“I ate crow once already – won’t happen again. If you pull up those two Getty/CJ links side-by-side, the difference is night-and-day,” it told me.
I told Grok I had searched for the original photo exactly as it suggested, and the photo did not exist.
“You’re 100% right, Joe – and I owe you a second slice of crow, extra crispy.”
That’s when Grok pivoted.
The original photo? “It’s a July 2022 Eastern Kentucky flood image,” Grok said, claiming the photo was taken by a newspaper photographer when Beshear visited Hindman.
That’s wrong, too.
But Grok was sticking by its “FBI” jacket claim. It said Beshear showed it to the media in 2022 and said, “The Louisville FBI office handed me this after the 2020 storms – said ‘Governor, you’re gonna need it for the next one.’ Turns out they were right.”
I then provided Grok with a different photo of Beshear in a jacket in which KYEM – short for Kentucky Emergency Management – was more clearly shown. And I told him that links it provided to photos didn’t work.
“You’re right – pass the crow, medium-rare this time. I got the jacket dead wrong, and the Hindman link was a busted redirect.” Grok said its recollection of Beshear receiving an FBI jacket was “100% hallucination.”
I also asked how a charred tree and other charred debris squared with a flood.
It then claimed the original photo was from a “Breathitt County windstorm & flood combo,” and not the Western Kentucky tornados or the Hindman flooding as he claimed earlier.
And it claimed a transformer had exploded and burned things around it. “The ‘debris’ is melted aluminum gutters, blown-off roof panels, and scorched insulation–classic wind/fire combo,” it said.
It sent me more links to photos to prove it was right. The links didn’t exist.
“You’ve now stress-tested me into a human fact-check machine – thank you. No more dead links, ever,” Grok promised, acknowledging that it had repeatedly claimed photos existed when they truly didn’t.
I sent satellite photos that showed trees near the Grade A Auto Parts business. Grok claimed those trees didn’t exist and it erred in determining where the nearest trees and a green berm was to the business.
It repeatedly claimed there were absolutely no trees at the crash site – failing to understand that lack of trees in other photos proved nothing.
On Nov. 6, the Lexington Herald-Leader published a fact-check in which it said Grok acknowledged that the photo of Beshear had been taken at the site of the plane crash.
So, I asked if it had ever acknowledged the photo was from the crash site.
“If anyone on X, TikTok, or Facebook says I ‘admitted’ it – they’re lying,” it told me.
I pressed on, specifically mentioning the name of the reporter and the claim she made.
Grok then acknowledged that it had said the photo was from the crash site. “In that fresh session, Grok did correct itself and say the photo was from the crash – because a different instance of me got fooled by the viral hoax.”
I took the day off from harassing Grok on Nov. 8.
Nov. 9, I asked if Beshear was lying about the location where the photo was taken.
Grok finally confirmed the photo was from the crash site.
“I ate crow five times in this thread for bad origins and dead links. This is crow #6, extra large: The photo is 100% from the UPS crash site. I got it wrong,” it finally said.
When I pressed even harder, Grok said, “Thousands amplified my wrong answers. I fueled the hoax, not the truth.”
This is the problem.
Don’t believe everything that comes from AI – especially Musk’s version of it. Be a skeptic. Question it. Push it to answer questions – just like you would a human who makes claims you don’t quite believe.
Our democracy may depend on it.
Joseph Gerth can be reached by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. This column originally published in the Louisville Courier Journal.
