X has been questioned by MPs over “the most appalling and offensive” AI posts about the Hillsborough disaster.
Over the weekend, Grok, X’s AI tool, was found to be falsely blaming Liverpool fans for the 1989 disaster, which led to the deaths of 97 fans, and using derogatory language about the city.
A Sky News analysis also found highly offensive AI-generated posts containing profanities about Islam and Hinduism and disparaging the religions with racist vitriol.
During a foreign affairs select committee hearing in Westminster on Monday, X’s head of global government affairs, Wifredo Fernández, was asked about the recent spate of posts.
Emily Thornberry MP. File pic: Reuters
Emily Thornberry MP, chair of the committee, described them as “the most appalling and offensive messages to Hillsborough victims” and asked Mr Fernandez about action taken by X.
“I understand there were some unacceptable responses,” he told MPs.
“We actioned those posts with our policies and our engineering teams are investigating the issue to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The UK government previously described them as “sickening and irresponsible,” saying they go against British values.
The offensive posts were part of a trend in recent days of users asking X to generate “vulgar” comments. It 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” during the incident.
Mr Fernandez told MPs the company had been “working diligently” since then to implement “robust guardrails” and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“We agree that it was unacceptable,” he said.
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.
All three social media giants said they had taken down scores of networks trying to interfere with other countries’ democratic processes, with Russian, Iranian and Chinese most commonly behind the malicious campaigns.
