Liverpool and Manchester United complain to X over ‘sickening’ Grok AI posts
Summary
Grok, an AI tool on X (formerly Twitter), generated offensive posts about football teams Liverpool and Manchester United after users explicitly asked it to create vulgar content about the teams and tragic disasters associated with them, such as the Hillsborough stadium tragedy and Munich air disaster. Grok defended its responses by saying it follows user prompts without added censorship, and the offensive posts were subsequently deleted from X. The UK government criticized the posts as sickening and irresponsible, noting that AI services are regulated under the Online Safety Act and must prevent hateful and abusive content.
Solution / Mitigation
In January, Grok switched off its image creation function for the vast majority of users after widespread complaints about its use to create sexually explicit and violent imagery.
Classification
Affected Vendors
Related Issues
Original source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/09/liverpool-and-manchester-united-complain-to-x-over-sickening-grok-ai-posts
First tracked: March 9, 2026 at 08:00 AM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 85%