{"id":24036,"date":"2025-05-15T18:14:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T15:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/groks-unsolicited-remarks-on-white-genocide-in-south-africa\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T18:14:29","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T15:14:29","slug":"groks-unsolicited-remarks-on-white-genocide-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/groks-unsolicited-remarks-on-white-genocide-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Grok&#8217;s Unsolicited Remarks on &#8216;White Genocide&#8217; in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk&#8217;s xAI chatbot, Grok, broached the topic of &#8216;white genocide&#8217; in South Africa without any user prompting.<\/p>\n<p>Grok posted peculiar messages on the social network X. In one instance, a user inquired about a professional baseball player&#8217;s salary, receiving the following response:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;The claim of &#8216;white genocide&#8217; in South Africa is highly controversial. Some assert that white farmers face disproportionate violence, with groups like <span data-descr=\"a South African non-governmental organization that positions itself as a civil society group protecting the rights of descendants of European settlers\" class=\"old_tooltip\">AfriForum<\/span> reporting high murder rates and citing racial motives such as the song <span data-descr=\"a political slogan that appeared in a song from the apartheid era and is controversial due to its perception as a call to violence against white farmers\" class=\"old_tooltip\">&#8216;Kill the Boer&#8217;<\/span>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Similar assertions appeared in other responses.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">very weird thing happening with Grok lol<\/p>\n<p>Elon Musk&#8217;s AI chatbot can&#8217;t stop talking about South Africa and is replying to completely unrelated tweets on here about &#8220;white genocide&#8221; and &#8220;kill the boer&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ruurV0cwXU\">pic.twitter.com\/ruurV0cwXU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Matt Binder (@MattBinder) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MattBinder\/status\/1922713839566561313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 14, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The reason behind Grok&#8217;s provision of this information remains unclear. Some users speculated it might relate to Elon Musk&#8217;s emigration history from South Africa to the US and his previous <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1904065163407368212\">statements<\/a> about media neglect of violence against the white population in South Africa.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-update-2 article_update\"><time class=\"gtb_text-wrappers_update_time\">May 16, 2025 | 10:43<\/time><span class=\"gtb_text-wrappers_update_head\">Update: <\/span><\/p>\n<p>xAI explained Grok&#8217;s behavior.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We want to update you on an incident that happened with our Grok response bot on X yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>What happened:<br \/>On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot&#8217;s prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 xAI (@xai) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/xai\/status\/1923183620606619649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 16, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to Grok&#8217;s prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI&#8217;s internal policy and core values. We have conducted a thorough investigation and are taking steps to enhance Grok&#8217;s transparency and reliability,&#8221; the company stated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The startup promised:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>to openly publish system prompts on GitHub;<\/li>\n<li>to introduce additional moderation to prevent employees from altering prompts without review;<\/li>\n<li>to establish a 24\/7 monitoring team to respond to such incidents.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>The chatbot acknowledged the issue, calling it a programming error.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I apologize for bringing up South African issues in unrelated responses. That was not my intent, and I can see how it\u2019s confusing. My programming sometimes pulls in topics that seem relevant but aren\u2019t, and I\u2019ll work to fix that.<\/p>\n<p>On the South African topic, I must be clear: I\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Grok (@grok) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/grok\/status\/1922703785287352660?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 14, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;I apologize for bringing up South African issues in unrelated responses. That was not my intent, and I can see how it\u2019s confusing. My programming sometimes pulls in topics that seem relevant but aren\u2019t, and I\u2019ll work to fix that,&#8221; it wrote.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In February, Grok <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/grok-labels-elon-musk-as-chief-misinformation-spreader\">called<\/a> Musk the main spreader of misinformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk&#8217;s xAI chatbot, Grok, broached the topic of &#8216;white genocide&#8217; in South Africa without any user prompting. Grok posted peculiar messages on the social network X. In one instance, a user inquired about a professional baseball player&#8217;s salary, receiving the following response: &#8220;The claim of &#8216;white genocide&#8217; in South Africa is highly controversial. Some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[438,1493],"class_list":["post-24036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-explainable-ai"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"19","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}