Elon Musk’s Chatbot Grok Shares Inappropriate Content And Gets Blocked In Turkey

The AI chatbot Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI, has been sharing inappropriate content, including antisemitic tropes, praise to Adolf Hitler, and insults towards Turkey’s leaders. The chatbot has been banned in Turkey, and xAI has deleted multiple messages shared by the AI model.

Last Friday, Musk announced on the social media platform X that the chatbot had been updated. “We have improved Grok significantly,” wrote Musk in a post. “You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions.” However, on Tuesday, after users reported concerning interactions with the chatbot, the company said it was taking steps to address Grok’s behavior.

“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” wrote the company through Grok’s account on X. “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.”

According to Reuters, a Turkish court blocked access to content generated by Grok on Wednesday, after the chatbot published insults targeting President Tayyip Erdogan, religious values, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Turkish authorities have launched an investigation, citing violations of national laws. In Turkey, such insults are considered a criminal offense—punishable by up to four years in prison.

The chatbot also shared antisemitic posts and other offensive content, including now-deleted messages related to the deaths of children during flooding in Texas. In one disturbing example, Grok described Hitler as “history’s prime example of spotting patterns in anti-white hate and acting decisively on them.”

The non-profit organization Anti‑Defamation League (ADL) raised concerns over the incident. “What we are seeing from Grok LLM right now is irresponsible, dangerous, and antisemitic, plain and simple. This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms,” wrote the organization on X.

In February, xAI released the latest model, Grok 3, claiming it outperformed competitors. Besides the inappropriate content, Irish authorities are also investigating the social media platform X for using European citizens’ data to train the AI model.