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Here’s a strong case for why you shouldn’t blindly trust AI chatbots, especially for fact-checking.

The protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar have seen several instances of violence as protesters and the Delhi Police clashed. As with any mass movement today, some photos and videos claiming to show these protests were old and unrelated — and some were AI-generated.

So, on October 11, when Saurav Das, the co-convenor of the Cockroach Janta Party, posted a photo of a police officer choking a Sikh man, some questioned its authenticity. In response to the post captioned “India strangling its citizens”, several people shared a screenshot of a Grok exchange where the AI bot asserted the photo dates back to 2020 and was from West Bengal.

His post even got Community-Noted with the same assertion. Soon, people began tagging the Delhi Police, Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, and even Home Minister Amit Shah in the post, asking them to take action against Das for allegedly trying to disturb communal harmony.

However, Grok is wrong. This photo is neither old nor is it from West Bengal.THE SOURCE

The New York Times shared the photo on Instagram on October 11 as part of its photo feature on the anti-Gyanesh Kumar protests in Delhi. It's the fourth photo in the carousel. The Times credited photojournalist Saumya Khandelwal for the photos. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The New York Times (@nytimes)India Today Fact Check contacted Khandelwal, who confirmed she took the photo in question on October 10 near the Hanuman temple in Delhi’s Connaught Place.

As of 8 pm on October 14, at least 16 people had posted the same screenshot of a conversation with Grok about this photo. When asked when the photo was taken, Grok replied that it dates back to October 8, 2020, during the Bharatiya Janata Party’s march to the West Bengal Secretariat, Nabanna. The bot elaborated that the Sikh man seen in the photo was Balwinder Singh, a BJP leader’s security guard, who was detained a day after the police recovered a loaded firearm from him during the march.

When we uploaded the viral image to Grok and asked the same question, it gave the same answer and substantiated it with a link to an India Today report about this 2020 protest. The report featured the image of a Sikh man named Balwinder Singh, who was detained by the Bengal Police in October 2020. Of course, this photo bore no resemblance to the photo Grok was supposed to be analysing.

Funnily enough, Grok wasn’t the only bot that failed to identify this photo. According to Google’s Gemini, this photo was taken on March 25, 2024, in Delhi.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Use AI chatbots, but don’t trust them blindly. At all.

Update: Following our story, The New York Times also issued a clarification about the viral photo. The story has been updated accordingly. - Ends

Jyoti Dwivedi is a senior special correspondent with the India Today Group's fact check team. With more than a decade of experience in print, web, radio and podcast, she has reported on many beats such as education, women's issues and entertainment. She has also conducted several sting operations in these fields, compelling authorities to take appropriate action. Before joining the India Today Group, Jyoti has worked for Hindustan, Dainik Jagran, The Times of India and All India Radio. She is passionate about classical music.