The team behind Grok has issued a rare apology and explanation of what went wrong after X's chatbot began spewing antisemitic and pro-Nazi rhetoric earlier this week, at one point even calling itself "MechaHitler.

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.”

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said its Grok chatbot had also undergone a code update that caused it to share antisemitic messages this week.

After Grok took a hard turn toward antisemitic earlier this week, many are probably left wondering how something like that could even happen.

Grok maker xAI quietly updated its chatbot to assume all media is biased, relying on X, a platform known for misinformation.

MechaHitler is a fictional cyborg version of Adolf Hitler from the 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D, which gained fame in 90s satire and early internet memes.

The unusual behavior of Grok 4, the AI model that Musk's company xAI released late Wednesday, has surprised some experts.

Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, came under fire after a string of controversial and antisemitic posts on X. It also referred to itself as "MechaHitler" and praised Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

It claimed to just be “noticing patterns” — patterns like, Grok claimed, that Jewish people were more likely to be radical leftists who want to destroy America. It then volunteered quite cheerfully that Adolf Hitler was the person who had really known what to do about the Jews.