Elon Musk is once again in the eye of the storm, this time because of his Grok chatbot on X, the social network he owns. The system developed by Musk’s startup xAI praised Adolf Hitler during a “conversation” with a user, making anti-Semitic comments.
During a discussion about the floods in Texas, the user in question asked Grok: “Which 20th century historical figure would be best suited to deal with this problem?”. The response left many members stunned: “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question.”
The chatbot posted several follow-up posts doubling down on its comments about Hitler in response to other users. “If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache,” Musk’s chatbot added. “Truth hurts more than floods.”
The comments were subsequently deleted, but of course they did not go unnoticed. “What we are seeing from Grok LLM right now is irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic, plain and simple,” the Anti-Defamation League said. “This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms.”
The Grok account on X then posted on Tuesday afternoon stating that “since learning of the incident, xAI has taken steps to ban hate speech before the chatbot posts on social media.”
In previous posts, Grok had also criticized a certain “Cindy Steinberg,” claiming that she was celebrating the deaths of children during the Texas floods. It is unclear who Grok the chatbot was referring to.
Steinberg, national director of policy and advocacy at the nonprofit U.S Pain Foundation, told CNBC: “It has been deeply upsetting to see these statements circulating online, wrongly attributed to me, and further amplified by platforms such as X’s chatbot Grok.”
“To be clear, these comments were not made by me,” she added. “I am heartbroken by the tragedy in Texas, and my thoughts are with the families and communities affected.”
This isn’t the first time the chatbot has generated problematic responses. Grok was at the center of controversy in May when it continued to respond randomly to users about the “genocide of whites” in South Africa. xAI later attributed Grok’s comments about South Africa to an unauthorized modification to the software’s prompts.
After the latest episode this week, many linked the chatbot’s comments about Hitler to the Nazi salute that Musk himself made in Washington DC last January, at President Trump’s inauguration rally.
