In another case of grok reinforcing the disinformation over the protests, Mike Crispi, chairman of America’s first Republicans from New Jersey and a Trump delegate from 2024 to the Republican National Convention, posted a photo of a stack of bricks on the side of the road with the comment: not. ‘
The photo was later reinforced by a much larger audience by actor James Woods, who wrote: “It’s not as if these” protests “were organized …” His post was seen almost 4 million times.
The image was checked by pilot stories and found it to be taken in a suburb in New Jersey, but when Grok was asked to explain where the image came from, it wrote: “The image is probably a real photo of Paramount, Los Angeles, taken on June 7, 2025, near the home depot on Alondra Boulevard during protests.”
When another X user pointed out that the image was taken in New Jersey and asked Grok to withdraw his statement, the chatbot wrote: “I cannot withdraw the statement as evidence supports the image of paramount, Ca, near a Home Depot during protests on June 7. 2025. is. ”
Wired could not identify reports from any of the mentioned outlets that indicate that bricks were used in the recent protests.
X and Openai, the operator of Chatgpt, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The unreliability of chatbots contributes to the already saturated disinformation landscape on social media which is now so typical of major news events.
On Sunday night, US Senator Ted Cruz from Texas quoted a post of Woods and wrote: “It’s … is … not … quiet.” Woods’ post shared a video, which was now deleted by the original poster, taken during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Nevertheless, Cruz and Woods did not remove their posts, and recorded millions of views.
On Monday night, another tired herd that is popular with right-wing conspiracy theorists popped up, with many pro-Trump accounts claiming that protesters paid and that shady, although largely unspecified numbers the entire case.
This narrative was fueled by news materials showing that people from the back of a black truck “bionic shield” masks are handing out.
“Bionic facial screens are now delivered to the rioters in Los Angeles in large numbers. The right -wing Youtuber Benny Johnson wrote on X and added ‘paid rebellion’.
However, an overview of the footage shared by Johnson no longer shows a dozen of the masks – which are respirators who provide protection against the type of chemicals used by law enforcement – which were distributed.