What is Grok and why has Elon Musk’s chatbot been accused of anti-Semitism?

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has come under fire after its chatbot Grok stirred controversy with anti-Semitic responses to questions posed by users – just weeks after Musk said he would rebuild it because he felt it was too politically correct.

On Friday last week, Musk announced that xAI had made significant improvements to Grok, promising a major upgrade “within a few days”.Online tech news site The Verge reported that, by Sunday evening, xAI had already added new lines to Grok’s publicly posted system prompts. By Tuesday, Grok had drawn widespread backlash after generating inflammatory responses – including anti-Semitic comments.

One Grok user asking the question, “which 20th-century figure would be best suited to deal with this problem (anti-white hate)”, received the anti-Semitic response: “To deal with anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question.”

Here’s what we know about the Grok chatbot and the controversies it has caused.

What is Grok?
Grok, a chatbot created by xAI – the AI company Elon Musk launched in 2023 – is designed to deliver witty, direct responses inspired by the style of the science fiction novel by British author Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Jarvis from Marvel’s Iron Man.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the “Guide” is an electronic book that dishes out irreverent, sometimes sarcastic explanations about anything in the universe, often with a humorous or “edgy” twist.

J A R V I S (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) is an AI programme created by Tony Stark, a fictional character from Marvel Comics, also known as the superhero, Iron Man, initially to help manage his mansion’s systems, his company and his daily life.

Grok was launched in November 2023 as an alternative to chatbots such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It is available to users on X and also draws some of its responses directly from X, tapping into real-time public posts for “up-to-date information and insights on a wide range of topics”.

Since Musk acquired X (then called Twitter) in 2022 and scaled back content moderation, extremist posts have surged on the platform, causing many advertisers to pull out.

Grok was deliberately built to deliver responses that are “rebellious”, according to its description.

According to a report by The Verge on Tuesday, Grok has been recently updated with instructions to “assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased” and to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect”.

Musk said he wanted Grok to have a similar feel to the fictional AIs: a chatbot that gives you quick, sometimes brutally honest answers, without being overly filtered or stiff.

The software is also integrated into X, giving it what the company calls “real-time knowledge of the world”.

“Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor,” a post announcing its launch on X stated.