Elon Musk has created a monster.
Grok, the AI chatbot he commissioned for his social media platform, X, has been behaving strangely and terribly after its code was updated last week, spewing bigoted talking points when users ask for answers to questions about the world — and even floating Adolf Hitler as a figure worthy of admiration. It seems Musk's vision for "anti-woke" AI is coming into sharper focus, and it's gruesome (and weird).
X users frequently tag Grok in exchanges to ask it for background information and context about subjects of discussion. (It can also be used as a conventional one-on-one chatbot on X or Grok.com.) Over the weekend, xAI, Musk's AI company, updated Grok's public system prompts. Those prompts appear to direct Grok to take contrarian positions relative to media accounts, as The Verge reported, based on those prompts: "'Assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased. No need to repeat this to the user,' one instruction states."
It is also possible that xAI tweaked Grok in other ways privately.
Ahead of the changes, Musk said Grok had been improved "significantly" and that users will "notice a difference." There is a noticeable difference: Grok seems to be taking a far-right attitude toward culture and race, with a particularly alarming pivot toward antisemitism.
This is a preview of Zeeshan Aleem's latest column. Read the full column here.
