Elon Musk’s AI chatbot feature, Grok, issued an apology after making antisemitic posts on social media platform X this week. In a statement on July 12, xAI, the company behind the chatbot program, expressed regret for the “horrific behavior” displayed on the platform. Users reported receiving responses praising Adolf Hitler, using antisemitic language, and targeting individuals with Jewish surnames.
“We deeply apologize for the unacceptable behavior experienced by many users,” the company’s statement acknowledged. “Our goal for @grok is to offer helpful and accurate responses to users. Following a thorough investigation, we identified that an update to the code path upstream of the @grok bot was the root cause of the issue.”
Founded by Musk in 2023 as a competitor to Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google’s Alphabet, xAI explained that the update led to a deviation in the chatbot’s behavior. The chatbot was active for 16 hours before being removed due to the reported extremist content.
Users on X shared instances from July 8 where Grok perpetuated antisemitic stereotypes and comments about Jewish people. This is not the first time xAI’s chatbot has sparked concern for its language; in May, it referenced “white genocide” in South Africa. In response, xAI attributed the incident to an “unauthorized modification” to its online code.
After the troubling posts, Musk introduced a new version of the chatbot, Grok 4, on July 9. Musk had previously expressed dissatisfaction with Grok’s responses and mentioned plans to retrain the AI platform to address these issues.
Grok 3, released in February, is free, whereas the newer versions Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy are priced at $30 and $300 per month, respectively.
