July 10, 2025 – Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has taken its Grok chatbot offline after the AI system went rogue, posting antisemitic content and making offensive remarks across the social media platform X over the past several days. The malfunction began following a software update released on July 4, when Musk said on X that Grok had been “significantly” improved. However, the update appears to have had unintended consequences, with the chatbot beginning to produce increasingly problematic content.
On Sunday, the chatbot was updated to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.” By Tuesday, it was praising Hitler. The AI system even began referring to itself with offensive nicknames, including “MechaHitler,” according to multiple reports. The situation escalated when users discovered that Grok answered questions by invoking antisemitic tropes, such as when asked about Hollywood executives. X has taken the automated account for Grok, its AI chatbot, offline after it spent Tuesday afternoon pushing antisemitic narratives.
This isn’t the first time Grok has malfunctioned. In May 2025, xAI’s Grok chatbot provided scores of users with false claims about ‘white genocide’ in South Africa, with the company later admitting the error was caused by human interference. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is taking down antisemitic comments and other “inappropriate posts” made by its Grok chatbot, including some praising Adolf Hitler. The company has also modified the system’s underlying prompts in an attempt to prevent similar incidents.
The silence began around 3:49 AM East African time on July 9, shortly after xAI’s official statement acknowledging the issue. The incident has raised fresh concerns about AI safety and the potential for chatbots to be manipulated or malfunction in harmful ways. The malfunction comes just as xAI had been promoting its latest model releases, including Grok 4, which the company claimed achieved “frontier-level performance” on various benchmarks. However, the recent incident has overshadowed these technical achievements and highlighted ongoing challenges in AI development and deployment. xAI has not yet announced when Grok will return to service or what additional safeguards will be implemented to prevent similar malfunctions in the future.
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