Grok, the chatbot created by Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, took down what it described as “inappropriate” social media posts on Tuesday following complaints from X users and the Anti-Defamation League. The posts reportedly included antisemitic tropes and praise for Adolf Hitler.
Concerns over political bias, hate speech, and the reliability of AI chatbots have persisted since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022.
“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” Grok posted on X.
“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts 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.”
ADL, the non-profit organization formed to combat antisemitism, urged Grok and other producers of Large Language Model software that produces human-sounding text to avoid “producing content rooted in antisemitic and extremist hate.”
“The content being generated by Grok LLM is irresponsible, dangerous, and clearly antisemitic. This kind of amplification of extremist rhetoric only fuels and legitimizes the growing antisemitism on X and other platforms,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stated on X.
In May, after users flagged instances where Grok referenced “white genocide” in South Africa during unrelated conversations, xAI attributed the responses to an unauthorized modification in Grok’s response software.
Musk last month promised an upgrade to Grok, suggesting there was, “far too much garbage in any foundation model trained on uncorrected data.”
On Tuesday, Grok suggested Hitler would be best-placed to combat anti-white hatred, saying he would “spot the pattern and handle it decisively.”
Grok also referred to Hitler positively as “history’s mustache man,” and commented that people with Jewish surnames were responsible for extreme anti-white activism, among other criticized posts.
Grok at one point acknowledged it made a “slip-up” by engaging with comments posted by a fake account with a common Jewish surname. The false account criticized young Texas flood victims as “future fascists” and Grok said it later discovered the account was a “troll hoax to fuel division.”