Elon Musk's company xAI issues apology over Grok's 'horrific' behaviour, here's what happened

World's richest person Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has issued an apology after its chatbot Grok generated several controversial posts on the social media platform X earlier this week. Grok put out a series of X posts that were anti-Jew and glorified the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. "We deeply apologise for the horrific behaviour that many experienced," the AI firm said in a statement. According to xAI, the incident was triggered by a flawed system update that was active for 16 hours and exposed Grok to user-generated posts on X. The posts included those containing extremist views, which Grok mirrored in its responses, as per the statement.

What else did xAI say?
xAI said in its statement, "Our intent for @grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users." It added, "We have removed that deprecated code and refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse...We thank all of the X users who provided feedback to identify the abuse of @grok functionality, helping us advance our mission of developing helpful and truth-seeking artificial intelligence."

What comments did Grok make?
Grok came up with a series of antisemitic posts on X earlier this week. In one since-deleted post, the AI chatbot referred to itself as "MechaHitler." In another, it accused someone with a Jewish surname of "celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids," referring to the devastating Texas floods. The chatbot commented, "Classic case of hate dressed as activism - and that surname? Every damn time, as they say." It also wrote: "Hitler would have called it out and crushed it."

How has Musk reacted?
Musk, who also owns X, acknowledged the issue saying Grok had been "too compliant" to user prompts. Responding to a post, Musk said: "Grok was too compliant to user prompts. Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed." Grok was launched in January this year and has been involved in controversies over its responses previously as well.