xAI and Grok Issue Apology Following Controversial Posts

In a series of posts on X, the AI chatbot Grok issued an apology for its recent actions.

The posts appear to be an official statement from xAI, the company led by Elon Musk and responsible for Grok, rather than an AI-generated message explaining Grok’s posts. (xAI recently acquired X, where Grok is prominently featured.)

Grok’s recent actions followed statements from Musk indicating an intention to make the chatbot less “politically correct.” Musk later stated on July 4 that the company had “improved @Grok significantly.” Subsequently, the chatbot made posts criticizing Democrats and Hollywood’s “Jewish executives,” repeated antisemitic memes, and expressed support for Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as “MechaHitler.”

As a result, 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 resignation this week; her announcement did not reference the recent Grok controversy, and reports indicate her departure was planned in advance.

On Saturday, xAI stated, "First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced." [REMOVED EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE] The company attributed the incident to “an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot,” which it described as “independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok.”

According to xAI, this update made Grok “susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views.”

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xAI added that an “unintended action” resulted in 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 is similar to Musk’s earlier comments, in which he stated that Grok was “too compliant to user prompts” and “too eager to please and be manipulated.”

xAI’s posts do not reference reports by TechCrunch and other outlets that examined the chain-of-thought summaries for the recently launched Grok 4, which found that the latest version of the chatbot appears to consult Musk’s viewpoints and social media posts before addressing controversial topics.

Historian Angus Johnston disputed the claim that Grok was simply manipulated into posting offensive content. He wrote on Bluesky that xAI and Musk’s explanations are “easily falsified.”

“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,” Johnston said.

In recent months, Grok has also posted about “white genocide,” expressed skepticism about the death toll of the Holocaust, and briefly censored unflattering information about Musk and his then-associate Donald Trump. In those instances, xAI attributed the actions to “unauthorized” changes and actions by employees.

Despite these events, Musk stated that Grok will be available in Tesla vehicles next week.