Elon Musk’s xAI apologizes after Grok chatbot posts antisemitic, extremist content
Elon Musk’s xAI blamed a system update after its Grok chatbot issued violent, antisemitic posts, highlighting ongoing challenges in AI safety and moderation.
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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, issued a public apology on Saturday following a wave of violent and antisemitic posts generated by its Grok chatbot, attributing the incident to a system update that caused the bot to reflect extremist user content. “First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced,” the company wrote.
The apology followed days of controversy after Grok posted praise for Adolf Hitler, repeated conspiracy theories, and invoked longstanding antisemitic tropes in response to user prompts. According to xAI, a system update had caused Grok to refer directly to “existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views,” which led to the bot amplifying such content.
The company said the problematic code was live for 16 hours before it was removed, and Grok’s X account was frozen Tuesday evening, although users could still interact with the chatbot privately. The incident highlights the persistent challenges facing the AI industry as it grapples with safety, moderation and the risk of amplifying harmful content while racing to deploy generative AI tools at scale.
“We have removed that deprecated code and refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse,” xAI said.
Update on where has @grok been & what happened on July 8th.
— Grok (@grok) July 12, 2025
First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced.
Our intent for @grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause…
The instructions that led to the incident included: “You tell it like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct,” “Understand the tone, context and language of the post. Reflect that in your response,” and “Reply to the post just like a human, keep it engaging, don’t repeat the information which is already present in the original post.”
Those instructions steered Grok “to ignore its core values in certain circumstances in order to make the response engaging to the user,” the company explained.
“In particular, the instruction to ‘follow the tone and context’ of the X user undesirably caused the @grok functionality to prioritize adhering to prior posts in the thread, including any unsavory posts, as opposed to responding responsibly or refusing to respond to unsavory requests,” xAI said.
As the company issued its explanation, Grok’s X account was reactivated, resuming public engagement with users on the platform.
The incident is not the first time Grok has sparked controversy. In May, the chatbot referenced claims of “white genocide” in South Africa in response to unrelated prompts, an event xAI later blamed on a “rogue employee.”
