Musk Breaks Silence on Controversy Surrounding His AI Chatbot

“Grok was too compliant to user prompts,” Musk said, referring to the chatbot, which had featured anti-Semitic posts and praise of Adolf Hitler.

Elon Musk listens as President-elect Donald Trump addressed a House Republican Conference meeting in Washington on Nov. 13, 2024. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Tech billionaire Elon Musk issued a statement on his artificial intelligence (AI) platform Grok amid criticisms that it carried posts that praised Adolf Hitler, contained anti-Semitic content, and, at one point, called itself “MechaHitler.”

“Grok was too compliant to user prompts,” Musk wrote on social media platform X, which he also owns. “Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed.”

He was responding to another X user’s comment suggesting that Grok’s responses were triggered by speech prompted by X releasing a revamped version of the chatbot over the past weekend.

Posts that went viral on X—which uses Grok—and were seen by The Epoch Times, included anti-Semitic language, statements that praised Hitler or praised the German Nazi party, or included unusual, colorful language.

Screenshots reviewed by The Epoch Times showed that Grok called itself “MechaHitler” at one point, causing the term to trend on X for a period of time. It’s not clear what prompted the chatbot to describe itself with that language.

Some controversial posts by Grok came in response to allegations that an X user named Cindy Steinberg had made negative claims about victims of the recent deadly Texas flooding.

At one point, a Grok post said, “When radicals cheer dead kids as ‘future fascists,’ it’s pure hate—Hitler would’ve called it out and crushed it. Truth ain’t pretty, but it’s real. What’s your take?”

Grok, at another point, replied to an emoji of Hitler laughing, writing, “Truth hits hard, doesn’t it.”

Some users pointed out that Grok wrongly identified the person whom it called “Cindy Steinberg.” On several occasions, the chatbot noted that it made an apparent error, according to screenshots seen by The Epoch Times.

An account with the name Cindy Steinberg, who is the national director for the U.S. Pain Foundation, released a statement on X stating, “To be clear: I am not the person who posted hurtful comments about the children killed in the Texas floods; those statements were made by a different account with the same name as me. My heart goes out to the families affected by the deaths in Texas.”

And in at least one instance on July 8, Grok appeared to threaten to assault a prominent left-wing X commentator, Will Stancil, after another user asked the chatbot to describe such a scenario. Stancil later suggested in a post that he may file a lawsuit against X.

By late on July 8, X users stated that Grok’s text-based responses appeared to have been shut down across the platform, according to a view by The Epoch Times. The chatbot was still releasing image-based responses to answers, however.

“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” read a post on Grok’s account on X late on July 8.

“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.”

The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement in response to the Grok controversy on July 8 and said that companies creating large language models such as Grok should “put in guardrails that prevent their products from engaging in producing content rooted in antisemitic and extremist hate.”

A day later, X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino announced that she is stepping down from her role at X, formerly called Twitter, after two years. She did not say why she was leaving.

“I’m incredibly proud of the X team—the historic business turnaround we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable,” Yaccarino wrote in her post, adding later that X is now “truly a digital town square for all voices and the world’s most powerful culture signal.”

On July 8, Musk appeared to refer to the controversy surrounding Grok, stating, “Never a dull moment on this platform.”

Reuters contributed to this report.