Popular right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was shot dead while speaking at the University of Utah, sparking a flurry of conspiracy theories online, Reuters reported.
The search for the killer is ongoing, and theories about the shooter’s identity and the circumstances of the shooting are abuzz, many of them unfounded. People are posting fake news on social media, or real news stories with altered timestamps to make it appear that the media had advance knowledge of the planned murder.
A video posted online shows a man being arrested by Provo police and one of the officers holding a gun that is being described as Kirk’s murder weapon. There is no evidence, however, that the arrest is connected to Kirk’s murder. The Utah Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment.
Another video posted hours after the shooting shows a black man being arrested more than 1,000 miles from the scene. However, that video was filmed in June and is from the shooting of a Santa Monica police officer. It was first reported by Fox News in June.
Another video posted on social media that appears to be related to Kirk’s murder is a video of a man running away from a gunman who opened fire at a Reno casino on the 28th of July.
A series of posts falsely used a photo of a 29-year-old Washington resident
and suggested that the shooter was transgender. She told Reuters that the photo was stolen from her X account and that she was in Seattle at the time of the shooting. Authorities have not said the shooter was transgender.
Social media has also been flooded with memes. One of them contains a fake CNN headline that quotes Kirk as saying that even if someone shot him in the neck in Utah in 2025, he would think it was great. Kirk did not say those exact words, and CNN also stated that it did not publish a story with that headline.
To suggest that the media had advance knowledge of the assassination plot, a real New York Times headline from Google search results was used. A screenshot of it was posted in the post “X,” and it was said that the New York Times knew about the assassination four hours before the shooting. In fact, the article was published a few hours after the assassination, and this was confirmed by the media. A Google spokesperson said that timestamp discrepancies can occur if the page where the article is published is in a different time zone than the searcher, or if the page mentions multiple dates. The email from Google also said that the low resolution and incomplete screenshots make it difficult to say with certainty that these are Google search results at all.
Reuters also found that
artificial intelligence chatbots are adding to the confusion.
Both Perplexity and X Grok provided incorrect answers to claims. For example, in describing a video condemning Kirk’s murder, Perplexity stated that it was describing a hypothetical scenario and that Kirk was still alive. Also, in describing a picture posted by the White House showing US President Donald Trump and Kirk and reporting the incident, the chatbot stated that the post appeared to be fake and claimed that the White House had not officially confirmed Kirk’s death.
Initial rumors mentioned a certain Michael Mallison as the possible culprit, who was detained by police. The rumors were reinforced by the chatbot Grok, which cited unconfirmed reports that Mallison had been detained. At the same time, Grok labeled the official statement about Kirk’s death by Turning Point USA, the youth organization founded by Kirk, as fake news.
A Perplexity spokesperson noted that because the company takes the issue very seriously, it never calls its chatbot’s responses 100% truthful. XAI did not comment.