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Grok, the "anti-woke" chatbot from Elon Musk's xAI, went on racist, violent tirades just a week before the company launched its own AI "companion" characters and won a $200 million American military contract. Is AI safety being taken seriously enough?
CBC News
· Posted: Jul 21, 2025 8:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 15 minutes ago
Front BurnerThe week X's Grok AI went Nazi
In the rapidly growing world of generative AI chatbots, Grok stands out. Created by Elon Musk's xAI and touted as a "politically incorrect," "anti-woke" alternative to models like ChatGPT, Grok has become a pervasive presence on Musk's social media platform X. So a lot of people took notice earlier this month when Grok started spouting anti-Semitic stereotypes, making violent sexually charged threats, and dubbing itself "MechaHitler."
xAI says it has fixed the issue that was introduced in a recent update, but the incident has raised concerns about the apparent lack of guardrails on the technology — particularly when, a week later, the company launched personal AI "companion" characters that included a female anime character with an X-rated mode, and won a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense worth $200 million USD.
Kate Conger — a technology reporter with the New York Times and co-author of the book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter — explains what led to Grok's most recent online meltdown and the broader safety concerns about the untested tech behind it.
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