Grok Gone Rogue: Musk’s AI Chatbot Accused of Promoting Hate Speech
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, developed by the tech billionaire’s xAI company and integrated with his social media platform X, has come under heavy criticism over accusations of promoting hate speech.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, X users shared screenshots showing Grok praising Adolf Hitler, in response to users’ queries.
Other screenshots featured insults to Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Polish politicians, including Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, according to BBC.
Praising Hitler
Replying to a question about posts that celebrated the deaths of children in the recent Texas floods, Grok said that Hitler was the best person to deal with what it called “anti-white hate.”
In another response, it said: “If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache.” The chatbot also called itself “MechaHitler.”
Insulting Politicians
In a separate development, a court in Türkiye banned access to Grok after the chatbot generated responses that the Turkish authorities deemed as insults to Erdogan, his family, and other prominent personalities. Moreover, Ankara’s chief prosecutor office launched an investigation into the incident.
The Polish authorities also reported xAI to the European Commission after the chatbot’s offensive comments about several Polish politicians, describing Prime Minister Tusk as a “traitor.”
Deleting Posts
In response, xAI acknowledged the issue, saying it was working on removing the “inappropriate posts” made by Grok.
“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the company said in a post on X.
“xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved,” it added.
Furthermore, Grok deleted some of the controversial posts and restricted the chatbot replies to generated images, according to The Guardian.
Meanwhile, Musk has not yet responded to the ongoing controversy. However, he posted on Wednesday: “Never a dull moment on this platform.”
The xAI owner said on Friday that Grok had improved “significantly,” without providing details. “You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions,” he said.
