The latest Grok controversy is revealing not for the extremist outputs, but for how it exposes a fundamental dishonesty in AI development.

As for why Grok was consulting Musk’s posts when asked about controversial topics, the company wrote, “The model reasons that as an AI it doesn’t have an opinion but knowing it was Grok 4 by xAI, searches to see what xAI or Elon Musk might have said on a topic to align itself with the company.”

Elon Musk’s company xAI apologized after Grok posted hate speech and extremist content, blaming a code update and pledging new safeguards to prevent future incidents.

A week after Elon Musk’s Grok dubbed itself “ MechaHitler ” and spewed antisemitic stereotypes, the US government has announced a new contract granting the chatbot’s creator, xAI, up to $200 million to modernize the Defense Department.

The response comes after X's Grok chatbot began spewing antisemitic and pro-Hitler comments earlier this week.

The Grok team chalked up the slew of inflammatory statements to a malfunctioning code update, not the tool's underlying AI model, and said the issue has now been resolved.

The announcement comes days after Grok spewed antisemitic and racist statements to its users, including praise for Adolf Hitler and “the white man.” It also referred to itself as “MechaHitler.” The debacle kick-started a wave of celebration amongst online extremists, many of whom called for the creation of more hateful AI chatbots.

The incident follows a previous issue with Grok last week, which began responding with hate-filled speech to users on X.

On Tuesday July 8, X (née Twitter) was forced to switch off the social media platform’s in-built AI, Grok, after it declared itself to be a robot version of Hitler, spewing antisemitic hate and racist conspiracy theories. This followed X owner Elon Musk’s declaration over the weekend that he was insisting Grok be less “politically correct.”

Musk wrote in an X post on Monday that AI companions are now available in the Grok app for "Super Grok" subscribers who pay $30 per month.