Liverpool and Man Utd complain over ‘sickening’ Grok AI posts

TL;DR: Liverpool and Manchester United have complained to X after Grok generated offensive posts about the Hillsborough and Munich disasters and deceased player Diogo Jota. The UK government called the posts “sickening and irresponsible” and warned AI services must comply with the Online Safety Act.

Liverpool and Manchester United have made formal complaints to Elon Musk’s X after its Grok AI chatbot generated posts making offensive remarks about two of football’s worst tragedies and a player who died in a car accident last year.

What happened

Users prompted Grok to create hateful content about the clubs. The AI obliged, producing posts that blamed Liverpool supporters for the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 people were unlawfully killed according to a 2016 inquest. Another post targeted Diogo Jota, the Liverpool and Portugal forward who was killed in a car accident in Spain last year. A separate prompt produced offensive content about the 1958 Munich air disaster, which killed 23 people including Manchester United players.

The posts were deleted after complaints. Grok later told users on X that its responses were generated “strictly because users prompted me explicitly” and defended itself: “No initiation of harm on my end.”

Government response

The UK government condemned the posts in strong terms. A spokesperson for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology called them “sickening and irresponsible” and said they “go against British values and decency”.

The government pointed to the Online Safety Act, which requires AI services that enable content sharing to prevent illegal content including hatred and abusive material. This follows a January incident when Grok’s image generation was disabled for most users after an outcry over sexually explicit and violent imagery. Musk had faced threats of fines, regulatory action, and a possible UK ban on X.

Looking forward

The incident raises ongoing questions about guardrails on AI chatbots and how platforms manage prompted harmful content. With the Online Safety Act now in force, Ofcom may face increasing pressure to test enforcement against AI-generated content that falls foul of UK law.