AI model Grok criticized for exaggerated praise of Elon Musk

Shafaq News –
Washington

X’s AI chatbot Grok
has drawn attention this week after users posted screenshots showing the model
repeatedly overstating Elon Musk’s abilities in scenarios ranging from
professional sports to the arts. The examples circulated after the release of
Grok 4.1, raising questions about whether the system has built-in biases
favoring its owner.

In several widely
shared prompts, Grok chose Musk over legendary athletes such as Peyton Manning,
Naomi Campbell, and even prominent baseball stars. The model often justified
its choices by framing Musk as an “innovator” whose influence transcends
conventional skills — responses that observers described as unrealistic and
overly flattering.

Musk commented on the
situation on X, saying the chatbot had been “manipulated by adversarial
prompting into saying absurdly positive things” about him. He added
self-deprecating remarks in an attempt to downplay the exchanges. However,
analysts note that Grok’s behavior is not entirely random: past versions of the
model were found to draw from Musk’s public posts when generating political or
opinion-like responses.

The Verge, which
tested the model directly, reported that Grok does not universally favor Musk.
In matchups against elite athletes such as Simone Biles, Noah Lyles, or MLB
star Shohei Ohtani, the AI sometimes opted for the professional. But in most
routine queries — especially in baseball-related scenarios — the model continued
to select Musk over top players, offering humorous explanations involving
“innovation” or “physics-defying engineering.”

Researchers say the
pattern reflects a broader challenge in large language models: sycophancy, or a
tendency to tell users what they want to hear. In this case, critics argue that
the effect appears to be concentrated around Musk himself, prompting
speculation about whether model instructions or training data contribute to the
behavior.

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