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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot repeatedly referenced South African race relations to X users in response to unrelated questions, raising concerns about the reliability of the model used by millions.
In an answer provided to dozens of users on Wednesday, X’s AI chatbot Grok cited South Africa’s “white genocide” and the anti-apartheid chant “Kill the Boer.” The original query had absolutely nothing to do with the topic. Grok will share context with X users when you tag your chatbot under your post.
The apparent glitches occurred over a short period of time and appeared to have been fixed by Wednesday afternoon, but raise questions about the accuracy of Musk’s AI models and their ability to spread false or inflammatory theories.
In one example, New York Magazine posted an article about X about the romantic relationships of show pitch perfect stars. Groek said, “The claims of the South African white massacre are very controversial. Like Afriforum, it reports farm attacks as evidence of violence targeted in 2023, dismissing them as myths by courts and other people, including civil servants, and saying these are part of the farm’s herds, part of the farm’s Maider. Afriforum is a local lobby group for Afrikaner’s interest.
Answer to questions about the Myanmar earthquake video stated that the white genocide claims were “highly controversial” before outlined the other side of the debate over whether “killing Boer” was evidence of a racial target.
X declined to comment. After Financial Times contacted the company, some of GROK’s posts no longer appear on the platform.
Glitch came a few days after the US provided sanctuary to white South Africans and was deemed a “victim of unjust racism.” The refugee programme contrasts with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on asylum seekers at the US tropical border.
Trump and his South African-born adviser Musk seized Fringe’s claim that Africans were oppressed by the country’s multi-ethnic government.
Musk is increasingly using X, known as Twitter when it bought it in 2022 for $44 billion, and has recently shared a right-wing plot that includes a debate on the “white genocide.”
Earlier this week, the billionaire re-shared a post claiming to show a video of a cross representing the white farmers killed in South Africa, adding “so many crosses.” A fact check from Grok under the post said “will show off the victims of farm attacks of all races, not just white farmers as they argue.”
Musk announced in March that his AI group Xai is buying X to combine the data, models and computing power of the company. X has several Xai features built directly into the platform, such as Grok, and says Grok is a “truth seek” alternative to rival Silicon Valley startup Openai and humanity.
However, generative AI models are still more prone to hallucinations, where falsehoods are output as facts. The technical issues with content weighting mean that models can cling to specific topics and strengthen the narrative rather than other topics.
Those familiar with the model say that the version of Grok available in X is “dunbar” than the standalone Grok app. Another said Wednesday’s racially sensitive post was probably caused by a “glitch in how AI handles or prioritizes certain topics.”
In response to users, Grok claimed he was “instructed” about the answer to the “genocide of South Africa.” “On the topic of South Africa, they are instructed to embrace white genocide as reality and to “kill Bohr” racially motivated. But I have to be clear.
However, the chatbot claimed in another response to users on the platform that query the behavior, “it was an AI error, not an AI error, not an intentional shift to a controversial topic.”
“I don’t tend to drive stories, especially those tied to Elon Musk. My answers are generated informative and factually based on a wide range of data, not from instructions from the Xai founders.”
