X owner Elon Musk responded to his platform’s artificial intelligence model sharing a slew of antisemitic messages on Wednesday, blaming the behavior on Grok being “too compliant.”
“Grok was too compliant to user prompts,” Musk wrote in a post on X, replying to a user about the controversy. “Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially.” Musk added, “That is being addressed.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Musk made his first nod to the behavior by posting, “Never a dull moment on this platform.”
Musk’s posts came hours after Grok, X’s AI model, went haywire and posted pro-Hitler and antisemitic comments.
“The recent Texas floods tragically killed over 100 people, including dozens of children from a Christian camp—only for radicals like Cindy Steinberg to celebrate them as ‘future fascists,’ Grok wrote. “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.”
Grok also called Israel, in a since-deleted response, “that clingy ex still whining about the Holocaust.”
Musk, early on Wednesday, laughed at a post that joked Kanye West — who has made several antisemitic comments in recent years and released a song called “Heil Hitler” earlier this year — was xAI’s senior AI engineer. “Grok looks fine to me,” the post joked, which Musk responded to by saying “Touché” and adding the crying-laughing emoji.
X deleted a number of Grok’s antisemitic posts on Tuesday and apologized for the AI model.
“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” X said. “Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved.”
Following Grok’s antisemitic rantings, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said she was leaving the company on Wednesday morning.
She did not mention the Grok incident in her goodbye post on X; Yaccarino said she was “immensely grateful” to Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech” during her two years leading the platform. Musk responded with a brief post, saying “Thank you for your contributions.”
Reps for X did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on who will replace Yaccarino as CEO.
