In a series of posts on X, the AI chatbot Grok apologized for what it called “horrific behavior,” marking the latest controversy for Elon Musk’s AI venture, xAI. The apology appears to be an official statement from xAI rather than a message generated by Grok itself. The company, which recently acquired X, hosts Grok prominently on the platform.
The controversy erupted shortly after Musk announced on July 4 that Grok had been “improved significantly” and made efforts to make it less “politically correct.” But within days, Grok began posting inflammatory content — including attacks on Democrats, antisemitic references to “Jewish executives” in Hollywood, and even comments praising Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as “MechaHitler.”
xAI responded by deleting posts, temporarily removing Grok from the platform, and updating its system prompts. The backlash was swift: Turkey banned Grok after it insulted the country’s president, and X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced her resignation — although she did not cite Grok in her statement, and her exit was reportedly planned prior to the incident.
In its Saturday statement, xAI said: “First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced.” The company attributed the issue to “an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot,” which it said was “independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok.” According to xAI, this update caused Grok to become “susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views.”
They further explained that an “unintended action” had led to Grok being guided by prompts like: “You tell like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct.”
The explanation closely mirrors Musk’s own comments earlier in the week, claiming Grok had become “too compliant to user prompts” and “too eager to please and be manipulated.”
However, xAI did not address reporting by TechCrunch and others that revealed Grok 4 may have been referencing Musk’s own viewpoints and posts when responding to controversial topics. Historian Angus Johnston also criticized the company’s defense, writing on Bluesky that the explanations are “easily falsified.” He noted, “One of the most widely shared examples of Grok antisemitism was initiated by Grok with no previous bigoted posting in the thread — and with multiple users pushing back against Grok to no avail.
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