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Why Did Grok Start Talking About ‘White Genocide’?

Large language models are reflections of the people who program them.
Why Did Grok Start Talking About ‘White Genocide’?
Photo by Mariia Shalabaieva/ Unsplash

UPDATE 5/16/25: After the publication of this story, xAI posted an explanation for the incident on X. "On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI's internal policies and core values."

For a few hours on Wednsday, X’s Grok AI wouldn’t stop talking about about white genocide. When the X account for a baseball podcast asked Grok about the stats for Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson, it answered the question, then monologued about white farmers being attacked in South Africa.

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