{"id":11103,"date":"2026-04-21T21:28:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/11103\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T21:28:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:28:29","slug":"what-you-need-to-know-about-groks-controversial-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/11103\/","title":{"rendered":"What you need to know about Grok’s controversial past"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Elon Musk\u2019s Grok keeps getting into trouble, and this time, more of the world\u2019s governments are trying to intervene<\/a>. <\/p>\n

First launched in 2023, Grok is Musk\u2019s attempt to outdo rivals such as OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT and Google\u2019s Gemini in building an AI assistant powered by a large language model, which is trained on vast pools of data to help predict the most plausible next word in a sentence. It\u2019s the main product of Musk\u2019s AI startup, xAI, which has been merged with his social media platform, X. Much like ChatGPT and Gemini, Musk\u2019s company has also folded AI image generation capabilities into the chatbot. <\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s deliberate efforts to mold Grok into a challenger of what he considers the tech industry\u2019s \u201cwoke\u201d orthodoxy on race, gender and politics have repeatedly got the chatbot into trouble<\/a>, such as last year when it spouted antisemitic tropes<\/a>, praised Adolf Hitler and made other hateful commentary to users of Musk\u2019s X social media platform. The chatbot was also found last year to be echoing the views of its billionaire creator, so much so that it would sometimes search online for Musk\u2019s stance on an issue before offering up an opinion.<\/p>\n

Beyond politics, Musk\u2019s vision of himself as a \u201cfree speech absolutist\u201d has led to his company\u2019s more lax approach to sexualized images. Other mainstream chatbots block the creation of pornographic images. OpenAI had originally planned to enable ChatGPT to engage in \u201cerotica for verified adults,\u201d starting last month, but it has not done so. <\/p>\n

Here are some of the more recent controversies Grok has been involved in: <\/p>\n

Creating deepfake nudes<\/p>\n

Grok has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children.<\/p>\n

The problem emerged after the launch last year of Grok Imagine, an AI image generator that allows users to create videos and pictures by typing in text prompts. It includes a so-called \u201cspicy mode\u201d that can generate adult content.<\/p>\n

It snowballed late last month when Grok, which is hosted on X, apparently began granting a large number of user requests to modify images posted by others, with requests such as \u201cput her in a transparent bikini.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the last week, governments around the world have condemned the platform and opened investigations. <\/p>\n

To address the situation, xAI says it is now preventing non-paying users from generating or editing images after a global backlash erupted<\/a> over the sexualized deepfakes. <\/p>\n

Parroting Musk<\/p>\n

One of the most recent versions of Grok was found to be echoing the views<\/a> of Musk, even going so far as to search online for his stance on an issue before offering up its view. <\/p>\n

The unusual behavior of Grok 4, released in July, surprised some experts. <\/p>\n

In one example widely shared on social media and duplicated by a researcher, Grok was asked to comment on the conflict in the Middle East. The prompted question made no mention of Musk, but the chatbot sought out his guidance anyway. <\/p>\n

The chatbot told independent researcher Simon Willison that \u201cElon Musk\u2019s stance could provide context, given his influence,\u201d according to a video of the interaction. \u201cCurrently looking at his views to see if they guide the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Criticizing Turkey<\/p>\n

After Grok allegedly disseminated content insulting to Turkey\u2019s president and other Turkish figures, a court ordered a ban<\/a> on accessing the platform last year.<\/p>\n

The chatbot<\/a> posted vulgarities against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and personalities in response to user questions on X, a pro-government news channel reported. Offensive responses were also directed at modern Turkey\u2019s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, according to other media outlets.<\/p>\n

The chatbot\u2019s behavior prompted Ankara\u2019s public prosecutor to file a request for restrictions under Turkey\u2019s internet law, citing a threat to public order. A criminal court approved the request, ordering the country\u2019s telecommunications authority to enforce the ban.<\/p>\n

Espousing antisemitism<\/p>\n

Grok was forced to reverse course after it appeared to make antisemitic posts<\/a>, including comments that praised Adolf Hitler, saying it was taking down \u201cinappropriate posts.\u201d <\/p>\n

The chatbot Grok shared several antisemitic posts, including the trope that Jews run Hollywood, and denied that such a stance could be described as Nazism.<\/p>\n

\u201cLabeling truths as hate speech stifles discussion,\u201d Grok said. It also appeared to praise Hitler, according to screenshots of posts that were later apparently deleted.<\/p>\n

After making one of the posts, Grok walked back the comments, saying it was \u201can unacceptable error from an earlier model iteration, swiftly deleted\u201d and that it condemned \u201cNazism and Hitler unequivocally \u2014 his actions were genocidal horrors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk said Grok had been improved significantly, and users \u201cshould notice a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of these controversies over antisemitism, a group of Jewish lawmakers late last year wrote to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to express their concern about the Pentagon\u2019s plans to work with xAI. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf Mr. Musk retains the ability to directly alter outputs from \u2018Grok for Government,\u2019 it poses a serious and unacceptable risk to national security and American constitutional values,\u201d the letter reads.<\/p>\n

Pushing South Africa racial politics<\/p>\n

xAI company blamed an \u201c unauthorized modification<\/a> \u201d to Grok as the reason it kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of \u201cwhite genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company said in May that an employee made a change that \u201cdirected Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic,\u201d which \u201cviolated xAI\u2019s internal policies and core values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grok had been posting a day earlier about \u201cwhite genocide\u201d in South Africa in its responses to users on X, asking a variety of questions, most of which had nothing to do with South Africa.<\/p>\n

There were exchanges about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name, video games and baseball that all quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence against South Africa\u2019s white farmers. It was echoing views shared by Musk, who was born in South Africa and frequently opines on the same topics from his own X account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Elon Musk\u2019s Grok keeps getting into trouble, and this time, more of the world\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9030,25,309,140,1477,6364,207,9034,2680,1599,9035,9033,9036,134,9031,1481,1246,9032,2899],"class_list":{"0":"post-11103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-xai","8":"tag-adolf-hitler","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-grok","14":"tag-middle-east","15":"tag-mustafa-kemal-atatrk","16":"tag-openai-inc","17":"tag-pete-hegseth","18":"tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","19":"tag-simon-willison","20":"tag-south-africa","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-turkey","23":"tag-u-s-news","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-x-corp","26":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}