xAI blaming Grok’s obsession for white genocide to an unauthorized modification
The strange replies came from the X account for Grok, which responds to users with AI-generated posts whenever a person tags “@grok.” The strange replies stemmed from the X account for Grok, which responds to users with AI-generated posts whenever a person tags “@grok.”
According to a post Thursday from xAI’s official X account, a change was made Wednesday morning to the Grok bot’s system prompt — the high-level instructions that guide the bot’s behavior — that directed Grok to provide a “specific response” on a “political topic.” xAI says that the tweak “violated
internal policies and core values,” and that the company has “conducted a thorough investigation.”
We want to update you on an incident that happened with our Grok response bot on X yesterday.[its]What happened:
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 instructed Grok to…
-xAI (@xai), May 16, 2025
xAI announced on Thursday it will make changes to its code to avoid similar incidents in the future. xAI has announced that it will begin publishing Grok’s prompts and changelog on GitHub today. The company says it’ll also “put in place additional checks and measures” to ensure that xAI employees can’t modify the system prompt without review and establish a “24/7 monitoring team to respond to incidents with Grok’s answers that are not caught by automated systems.”
Despite Musk’s frequent warnings of the dangers of AI gone unchecked, xAI has a poor AI safety track record. Grok, according to a recent report, would undress photos of women if asked. A study by SaferAI, a non-profit aiming to improve accountability in AI labs found that xAI ranks low on safety amongst its peers due to its “very poor” risk management practices. Earlier this week, xAI missed a deadline it set for itself to publish a finalized AI Safety Framework.
