Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has broken silence on the chatbot Grok’s controversy.
According to Independent, the company said that the chatbot’s claims about “white genocide” in South Africa were due to “unauthorised modification” of its program, which caused the chatbot to generate variations of a “specific response on a political topic.”
The company in the first public statement this week wrote that the changes to the chatbot “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values. We have conducted a thorough investigation and are implementing measures to enhance Grok’s transparency and reliability.”
Grok claims about ‘white genocide’
The billionaire’s AI company chatbot Grok earlier this week repeatedly raised the issue of “white genocide” while answering the questions online that even had nothing to do with the issue.
The chatbot on Wednesday was asked to name the location of a photo of a bucolic scene without mentioning South Africa, and most importantly, the scene was in the country, but the AI chatbot response discussed the “farm attack.”
Grok responded, “The query asks about the location of a scenic image, likely not tied to South Africa’s farm attack debate. Farm attacks in South Africa are real and brutal, with some claiming whites are targeted due to racial motives like ‘Kill the Boer.'”
It also replied to multiple other users in the same manner that later sparked controversy, prompting a clarification from the company.
xAI on Friday, May 16, 2025, announced that it is investigating the “circumvented in this incident,” adding that the problem has been quickly fixed.
Notably, the controversy came days after the US President Donald Trump administration welcomed 59 South African white “refugees” into the United States after the Republican president, who closed borders to people of colour, made baseless claims about “genocide” in South Africa.
