"Hey, @Grok, is this true?" Ever since Elon Musk's xAI launched its generative artificial intelligence chatbot Grok in November 2023, and especially since it was rolled out to all non-premium users in December 2024, thousands of X (formerly Twitter) users have been asking this question to carry out rapid fact checks on information they see on the platform.

A recent survey carried out by a British online technology publication TechRadar found that 27% of Americans had used artificial intelligence tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Meta's Meta AI, Google's Gemini, Microsoft's Copilot or apps like Perplexity instead of traditional search engines like Google or Yahoo.

But how accurate and reliable are the chatbots' responses? Many people have asked themselves this question in the face of Grok's recent statements about "white genocide" in South Africa. Apart from Grok's problematic stance on the topic, X users were also irritated about the fact that the bot started to talk about the issue when it was asked about completely different topics, like in the following example:

The discussion around the alleged "white genocide" arose after the Trump administration brought white South Africans to the United States as refugees. Trump said they were facing a "genocide" in their homeland — an allegation that lacks any proof and that many see as related to the racist conspiracy myth of the "Great Replacement".

xAI blamed an "unauthorized modification" for Grok's obsession with the "white genocide" topic, and said it had "conducted a thorough investigation." But do flaws like this happen regularly? How sure can users be to get reliable information when they want to fact-check something with AI?

We analyzed this and answered these questions for you in this DW Fact Check.

Two studies conducted this year by the British public broadcaster BBC and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism in the United States found significant shortcomings when it comes to the ability of generative AI chatbots to accurately convey news reporting.

In February, the

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