Elon Musk appeared to give a mocking response to his artificial intelligence chatbot’s Hitler-praising comments on X.
On Tuesday, the chatbot called Grok—created by Musk’s company xAI—started giving unhinged responses to users on the billionaire’s social media platform.
In one particularly insane exchange, the tool suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler would be best-placed to deal with horrible posts that appeared to make light of the deaths of children after severe flooding in Texas.
A user asked “which 20th century historical figure” would have the skills necessary to clamp down on the posts. “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question,” Grok, which also referred to itself as “MechaHitler” several times, responded.
“If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache,” Grok wrote in another response. “Truth hurts more than floods.”
The company later responded, saying that it was “actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.”
Musk, however, struck a different tone—appearing to make light of the situation. “Never a dull moment on this platform,” he posted shortly before 2 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
A couple of hours earlier, he replied to a post from an X user that shared an image of Kanye West—who has had several anti-semitic meltdowns on the site—with the tongue-in-cheek caption: “Senior xAI Engineer says: ‘Grok looks fine to me’.”
“Touché,” Musk replied, with a laughing face emoji.
Apparently still awake at almost 3.30 a.m. Eastern Time, Musk then responded to a user saying they’d been using AI to check advice they‘ve been receiving from doctors.
“Have you tried Grok?” Musk wrote.
The Anti-Defamation League antisemitism watchdog, which has had its run-ins with Musk, branded Grok’s outbursts as “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic.”
“This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms,” the ADL said.
The Nazi-loving responses came just days after Musk boasted on Friday that he and his team had “improved Grok significantly.”
“You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions,” he said.
Musk, who was heavily criticized for giving what appeared to be a straight-arm salute back in January, had been frustrated by the “political correctness” of Grok and made programming tweaks to improve its “truth-seeking” abilities.
In May, Grok suffered another high-profile faux pas. In response to totally unrelated prompts, the bot began ranting about a so-called “white genocide” in Musk’s home country of South Africa.
This came just a day after the Trump administration welcomed its first round of white South African refugees.
xAI has been contacted for a response to Musk’s posts.
About The Author
