Grok (mis-)counting letters again

In the a comment on "AI counting again" (12/20/2024), Matt F asked "Given the misspelling of ‘When’, I wonder how many ‘h’s the software would find in that sentence."

So I tried it — and the results are even more spectacularly wrong than Grok's pitiful attempt to count instances of 'e'.

The answer is actually 27. Here's the output of my little letter-counting-and-superscripting program:

Wh¹en in th²e Course of h³uman events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve th⁴e political bands wh⁵ich⁶ h⁷ave connected th⁸em with⁹ anoth¹⁰er, and to assume among th¹¹e powers of th¹²e earth¹³, th¹⁴e separate and equal station to wh¹⁵ich¹⁶ th¹⁷e Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle th¹⁸em, a decent respect to th¹⁹e opinions of mankind requires th²⁰at th²¹ey sh²²ould declare th²³e causes wh²⁴ich²⁵ impel th²⁶em to th²⁷e separation.

Obviously counting letters is not a key criteria of intelligence — but it's an easy thing for a computer program to do, and for an allegedly intelligent computer program to confidently state a false count is not exactly evidence of intellectual brilliance.