Did football player Patrick Mahomes reject a "$10 Million Offer" from Elon Musk? No, that's not true: Musk did not make the public statement the story said he did. An AI detector concluded that the text of the story, including bogus quotes, was highly likely to have been generated using AI. It also contained several phrases from an almost identical false story about Dawn Staley that went viral earlier the same week.
The story appeared in an article (archived here) published by a website named autulu.com on March 26, 2025 titled 'Patrick Mahomes Shocks the World by Rejecting Elon Musk's $10 Million Offer: "Keep It and Spend It on Something That Actually Helps People!"' which opened:
Tech mogul and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines when he offered a remarkable $10 million donation. The offer came in response to the ongoing discussions surrounding the future of football and the growing influence of Patrick Mahomes' legacy, particularly his impact on both the NFL and youth development through his football program.
Musk, known for his larger-than-life persona and his passion for supporting innovative causes, expressed his admiration for Mahomes' leadership both on and off the field. "Patrick Mahomes has redefined the game of football," Musk tweeted. "I stand with you, Patrick."
This is what the story looked like on the site:
(Image: autulu.com screenshot taken by Lead Stories)
Lead Stories searched Elon Musk's X account for the phrase "Patrick Mahomes has redefined the game of football" and came up empty (archived here)
Lead Stories used the Hive AI Detector browser extension to analyze the sample of the text of the story, and the tool said it was "99.8 percent likely to be AI-Generated," as shown in the screenshot below:
Only a few days ago Lead Stories debunked an almost identical fake story titled '"Dawn Staley Shocks the World by Rejecting Elon Musk's $10 Million Offer. She says 'Keep It and Spend It on Something That Actually Helps People!"".
