The
Metropolitan police has had to counter false suggestions by the artificial intelligence on Elon Musk’s X platform that the force passed off footage from 2020 as being from Saturday’s far-right rally in the city.
The claim by the chatbot Grok was in answer to an
X user’s query about where and when footage of police clashing with crowds was filmed.
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Grok, which
has had a track record of giving false and misleading answers, replied: “This footage appears to be from an anti-lockdown protest in London’s Trafalgar Square on 26 September 2020, during clashes between demonstrators and police over Covid restrictions.”
The answer was quickly picked up and amplified by X users, including the Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, who tweeted: “This was my suspicion,” before asking: “Did the Met claim footage of clashes in summer 2020 took place yesterday?”
The Met
responded to her by saying that the footage was filmed on Saturday shortly before 3pm at the junction of Whitehall and Horse Guards Avenue.
“It is quite obviously not Trafalgar Square as is suggested in the AI response you have referenced, but for the avoidance of further doubt we have provided a labelled comparison to confirm the location,” the force added.