Much like its creator, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was preoccupied with South African racial politics on social media this week, posting unsolicited claims about the persecution and “genocide” of white people.

If you have a question for Grok today, there's a chance X's AI chatbot replied by talking about "white genocide" in South Africa, a controversial talking point in far-right circles.

The artificial intelligence model had bizarrely mentioned the subject in answers to unrelated user queries about HBO’s name change, a baseball player’s salary, Pope Leo XIV and WWE

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said an “unauthorized modification” to its chatbot Grok was the reason why it kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of “white genocide” on social media this week.

Steven Adler breaks down recent erratic behavior from leading chatbots. It has been an odd few weeks for generative AI systems, with ChatGPT suddenly turning sycophantic, and Grok, xAI’s chatbot, becoming obsessed with South Africa.

The announcement was made at Microsoft’s Build developer conference on Monday, and was notable given Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI. Musk founded xAI, the startup behind Grok, but he has also been locked in a feud with OpenAI since stepping down from its board in the late 2010s, citing disagreements over its leadership direction.