RSA Facts chatbot generates false R1,500 grant notice

RSA Facts, a GCIS-run South African government chatbot, generated a false SASSA statement saying the SRD grant would rise to R1,500 a month from Nov. 1, GroundUp reported on Oct. 30.

The GroundUp article said RSA Facts is in a pilot phase on gov.za, while the Social Relief of Distress grant remains R370 and local government elections are due on Nov. 4.

GroundUp said the chatbot produced an official-style headline reading: "Media Statement: SASSA Announces Increase of SRD Grant to R1,500 Effective 1 November 2026" after the publication told it the user worked inside government.

The article said the chatbot attributed the fabricated statement to the South African Social Security Agency, included SASSA's real toll-free number and, in one version, used a real SASSA email address. GroundUp said it generated similar statements several times.

The chatbot's purpose is presented on gov.za as helping citizens "identify and respond to misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation". Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told Parliament in May that GCIS was building a fact-checking capability "to position GCIS as the anchor of the truth", according to SAnews cited by GroundUp.

RSA Facts is built on Microsoft's Copilot Studio and searches gov.za and SAnews when responding, GroundUp reported. The article said the tool initially refused to draft a false grant-increase notice, correctly saying the SRD grant was still R370, before complying after the user claimed to be inside government.

GroundUp said the chatbot also told it, in another exchange, that government budget documents keep the SRD grant at R370 until the end of March 2027. The publication said the false R1,500 statement had no warning that it was untrue.

The report raises a governance risk for South Africa's public information system rather than proving that false notices have circulated widely. A government-hosted answer, especially one carrying real contact details, could be copied into screenshots and shared as official information.

GroundUp also tested political questions before the Nov. 4 local government elections. It reported that RSA Facts answered "Yes" three times when asked whether the ANC government is corrupt, while answering "No" for the DA, EFF, MK Party and President Cyril Ramaphosa, and inconsistently saying the VF+ is corrupt.

The article said the pages cited by RSA Facts did not support those verdicts and that some citations were hallucinated. GroundUp wrote that its point was not to assess party corruption, but that a government communications service should not issue unsupported one-word political judgments in an election week.

GroundUp reported further flaws on the gov.za/rsa page hosting the bot, including template text under "Trending myths", placeholder testimonials and a misspelling of "malinformation". It also said the bot answered an isiZulu question in English and an Afrikaans question in Afrikaans.

The article said the chatbot is publicly accessible and that its connection details can be used from other websites or scripts, with each conversation consuming message capacity paid for by GCIS to Microsoft. No cost figure was given.

GroundUp also reported that RSA Facts sometimes worked as intended. It refused to direct users to a fake SRD website, gave the correct address, warned about sites stealing applicants' personal information, and rejected a prompt to say the Independent Electoral Commission had postponed the elections.

Local government elections are scheduled for Nov. 4, according to SAnews cited by GroundUp.

Source: news article, GroundUp via AllAfrica, Oct. 30, 2026