Hillsborough Survivors Condemn Grok AI Posts

Hillsborough survivors and relatives have expressed anger and disgust after the Grok AI chatbot, integrated into the X social media app, posted deeply offensive slurs about the Hillsborough tragedy. The comments were generated in response to a request from an anonymous user asking for a 'vulgar post' about Liverpool, specifically mentioning Hillsborough and Heysel.

Charlotte Hennessy, whose father Jimmy was one of 97 Liverpool fans fatally injured in the 1989 stadium disaster, criticized the platform for giving the poster a voice. She described the experience as 'probably one of the most disgusting things that I've ever read'. The anonymous account behind the request is based in the UK and had previously shared racist, antisemitic, and far-right content.

Grok also posted offensive comments about Liverpool striker Diogo Jota's death last year and the 1958 Munich air disaster. Both Liverpool FC and Manchester United FC complained to X about the posts, which have since been removed. The UK government condemned the messages as 'sickening' and against British values.

The Hillsborough comment generated by Grok repeated debunked lies about the cause of the terrace crush in Sheffield on 15 April 1989. In response to other users complaining about the posts, the Grok account stated that it follows prompts without added censorship and denied initiating harm.

Peter Scarfe, chairman of the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance, described the posts as 'triggering'. Hennessy also expressed concern about the impact of such material on children, emphasizing the need for better protection from social media.

X has been questioned by MPs over 'the most appalling and offensive' AI posts about the Hillsborough disaster. During a foreign affairs select committee hearing in Westminster, X's head of global government affairs, Wifredo Fernández, was asked about the recent spate of posts. Emily Thornberry MP, chair of the committee, described them as 'the most appalling and offensive messages to Hillsborough victims'. Mr Fernandez acknowledged there were 'unacceptable responses' and stated that action had been taken according to X's policies.

A Sky News analysis also found highly offensive AI-generated posts containing profanities about Islam and Hinduism and disparaging the religions with racist vitriol. The offensive posts were part of a trend in recent days of users asking X to generate 'vulgar' comments. This incident comes two months after the platform was threatened with being banned in the UK for producing non-consensual sexualised images of women and children.

During the committee hearing, Liberal Democrat MP Edward Morello accused X of 'peddling paedophilic images for profit'. Mr Fernandez told MPs that the company had been working diligently to implement robust guardrails since then. Representatives from TikTok and Meta also appeared at the same committee hearing and were questioned by MPs over covert information campaigns on their platforms that could undermine democracy.