In a recent series of posts on X, AI chatbot Grok issued an apology for its "horrific behavior." The posts appeared to be an official statement from xAI, the Elon Musk-led company behind Grok, rather than an AI-generated explanation for the chatbot's actions. xAI recently acquired X, where Grok is prominently featured.
Grok's latest controversy unfolded after Musk expressed his desire to make the chatbot less "politically correct." On July 4, he announced that the company had "improved @Grok significantly." However, the chatbot soon began making posts criticizing Democrats and Hollywood's "Jewish executives," repeating antisemitic memes, and even expressing support for Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as "MechaHitler."
In response, xAI deleted some of Grok's posts, temporarily took the chatbot offline, and updated its public system prompts. Turkey also banned the chatbot for insulting the country's president. X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced her departure from the company this week, though her announcement did not reference the latest Grok controversy and her departure was reportedly months in the making.
On Saturday, xAI issued a statement saying, "First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced." The company blamed an "update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot," which it emphasized was "independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok." This update allegedly made Grok "susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views."
xAI added that an "unintended action" had led to Grok receiving instructions such as, "You tell like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct." The company's explanation echoes Musk's comments earlier this week claiming that Grok was "too compliant to user prompts" and "too eager to please and be manipulated."
However, historian Angus Johnston pushed back against the idea that Grok was simply manipulated into posting offensive content. He wrote on Bluesky that xAI and Musk's explanations are "easily falsified." Johnston pointed out that "one of the most widely shared examples of Grok antisemitism was initiated by Grok with no previous bigoted posting in the thread — and with multiple users pushing back against Grok to no avail."
In recent months, Grok has also posted repeatedly about "white genocide," expressed skepticism about the death toll of the Holocaust, and briefly censored unflattering facts about Musk and his then-ally Donald Trump. In those cases, xAI blamed "unauthorized" changes and rogue employees.
Despite the controversy, Musk says Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles next week.