President Donald Trump’s first major speech of his second term Tuesday night had all the hallmarks of one that could have been delivered by a ‘Russian asset’ compromised by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, according to the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk.
In fact, the chatbot named Grok – brainchild of Musk’s company xAI– said it was “75-85% likely” that the individual who addressed a joint session of Congress more or less works for Putin based on publicly available data, columnist EJ Montini wrote Tuesday.
Montini, of the Arizona Republic, told readers in an opinion piece dissecting the startling suggestion floated by Grok that it all began with a single question:
“What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin-compromised asset? Use all publicly available information from 1980 on and his failure to ever say anything negative about Putin but has no issue attacking allies.”
From there, Musk’s “genius AI chatbot” strung together data points that led to its ultimate conclusion, Montini said.
ALSO READ: AOC slams New York's 'whole damn Republican machine' amid local scandals
“Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, as Trump faced bankruptcies, he increasingly relied on funding from sources tied to Russia and former Soviet states,” Grok is reported to have said. “His sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, made statements reinforcing this: Donald Jr. in 2008 said, ‘Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,’ and Eric in 2014 claimed, ‘We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’”
Along with Trump’s financial ties to Russia, his “consistent refusal to criticize” the Russian president were also cited as factors in Grok’s judgement, according to Montini. It also weighed Trump’s “ego,” saying that, coupled with his debts, “make him unwittingly pliable.”
“I estimate a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties,” the chatbot reportedly said.
That should “come as no surprise,” according to Montini, who openly wondered if such technology “ is a help or a hindrance.”
“And it makes you wonder if Trump’s pal, Vladimir, enjoyed the speech,” the columnist concluded.