Manchester United and Liverpool successfully persuaded the social media platform X to remove a series of posts generated by Grok that clubs described as “sickening and irresponsible.” The posts, reported by The Athletic, referenced the 1958 Munich air disaster, the fatal crowd crush at Hillsborough in 1989 and the tragic passing of Liverpool forward Diogo Jota last summer. The material was taken down later that same Sunday.<\/p>\n
The incident underlines how a long-standing problem has migrated into the digital age. What supporters call “tragedy chanting”\u2014the open mocking of events that have caused real human loss\u2014has existed in stadiums and on walls for decades; social media and AI are now extensions of that conduct. The clubs most affected, the two most successful in English soccer history who have both been touched by notable tragedies, have faced this abuse regularly.<\/p>\n
In March 2023, the managers of both clubs\u2014then Erik ten Hag and J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2014issued a joint statement on the subject. “It is unacceptable to use the loss of life\u2014in relation to any tragedy\u2014to score points, and it is time for it to stop,” Ten Hag wrote. Klopp added: “We do want the noise, we do want the occasion to be partisan and we do want the atmosphere to be electric. What we do not want is anything that goes beyond this and this applies especially to the kind of chants that have no place in football.” Those words did not end the behaviour.<\/p>\n
As recently as February, Nottingham Forest warned fans against tragedy chanting ahead of Liverpool’s visit. Earlier this year a Liverpool supporter received a three-year ban from attending all soccer matches after chanting about the death of two Leeds United fans.<\/p>\n
Social media can provide anonymity that facilitates abuse, and the U.K. government has moved to limit how AI tools can be used in this way. Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne called the posts “appalling and completely unacceptable,” predicting that they “will fill the vast majority of fans with horror and disgust.” “It\u2019s shocking and upsetting that hate-filled language like this can be generated by Grok on such a major platform,” Byrne told The Athletic. The member of U.K. parliament also questioned “how this was allowed to happen,” pointing out: “Technology companies have a responsibility to ensure their tools do not produce or amplify abuse.” The Online Safety Act launched in 2023 deems that spreading “threatening communications” is considered a criminal offence. A spokesperson for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said: “These posts are sickening and irresponsible. They go against British values and decency.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Man Utd and Liverpool forced Grok posts off X after AI-produced posts mocking past tragedies online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,179,172],"tags":[1505,1471,1200],"class_list":["post-7909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-all-red-all-equal","tag-busby-babes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}