A ‘rogue employee’ was behind Grok’s unprompted ‘white genocide’ mentions

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company on Friday said a “rogue employee” was behind its chatbot’s unsolicited rants about “white genocide” in South Africa earlier this week.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company on Friday said a “rogue employee” was behind its chatbot’s unsolicited rants about “white genocide” in South Africa earlier this week. The clarification comes less than 48 hours after Grok — the chatbot from Musk’s xAI that is available through his social media platform, X — began bombarding users with unfounded genocidal theories in response to queries about completely off-topic subjects. In an X post, the company said the “unauthorized modification” in the extremely early morning hours Pacific time pushed the AI-imbued chatbot to “provide a specific response on a political topic” that violates xAI’s policies. The company did not identify the employee. “We have conducted a thorough investigation and are implementing measures to enhance Grok’s transparency and reliability,” the company said in the post. To do so, xAI says it will openly publish Grok’s system prompts on GitHub to ensure more transparency. Additionally, the company says it will install “checks and measures” to make sure xAI employees can’t alter prompts without preliminary review. And the AI company will also have a monitoring team in place 24/7 to address issues that aren’t tackled by the automated systems. Musk, who owns xAI and currently serves as a top White House adviser, was born and raised in South Africa and has a history of arguing that a “white genocide” was committed in the nation. The billionaire media mogul has also claimed that white farmers in the country are being discriminated against under land reform policies that the South African government says are aimed at combating apartheid fallout.