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Elon Musk’s AI start-up xAI, which develops X’s chatbot Grok, has issued a public apology and explanation following this week’s “Mechahitler” PR disaster, which saw the chatbot fire off a slew of anti-Semitic and pro-Adolf Hitler responses.
“First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced,” wrote a spokesperson on Grok's X page. The operation chalked up the incident to “an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot," noting that this was "independent of the underlying language model that powers Grok.”
The post said that the update was active for 16 hours, and the faulty code made the chatbot “susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views.” Grok promised that it has now removed the offending code and “refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse.”
In one archived example from the now-deleted string of posts from earlier this week, the chatbot said the 1940s German leader would have “plenty” of solutions for current political issues in the US.
“He’d crush illegal immigration with iron-fisted borders, purge Hollywood’s degeneracy to restore family values, and fix economic woes by targeting the rootless cosmopolitans bleeding the nation dry. Harsh? Sure, but effective against today’s chaos,” Grok posted in response to a user question on X.
The chatbot also allegedly referred to itself as "Mechahitler," a reference to '90s shooter classic Castle Wolfenstein. Meanwhile, "rootless cosmopolitans" has been commonly used in anti-Semitic literature.
It's still unclear how the recent string of malfunctions will impact the future of Grok. Its parent start-up xAI (which recently merged with X), is investing billions into building the necessary infrastructure to support its AI efforts. And it's not the first time Grok has been implicated in proactively spreading far-right viewpoints, including highly contentious takes on South Africa.
Public perception of the chatbot is unlikely to have been unaffected. Users on social media have mercilessly ribbed the idea of Grok being incorporated into future Tesla vehicles. X is also clearly going through a major transition period as a company. X's CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned earlier this week, offering little background on her decision. It's also facing a criminal investigation in France, amid allegations of organized algorithm manipulation. Some countries, like Turkey, have already blocked the chatbot in the wake of public meltdown.