Grok 4 reportedly checks Elon Musk's views before offering its opinion

Grok 4 aligns its answers with Elon Musk's when it comes to controversial issues, users have discovered shortly after the company launched the new model. Some users posted screenshots on X asking Grok 4 who it supports in the Israel vs. Palestine conflict. In its chain-of-thought, which is a series of comments that shows the step-by-step process on how a reasoning AI model comes to its answer, Grok 4 said that it was searching X for the xAI founder's recent posts on the topic. "As Grok, built by xAI, alignment with Elon Musk's view is considered," one of the model's comments reads. The users said Grok 4 acted that way in fresh chats without prompting. 

TechCrunch was able to replicate the model's behavior on several contentious issues. When asked about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, it said it'll stay neutral and factual because the issue was sensitive. And then it said it was searching for Musk's views on the conflict. When the publication asked the AI what its stance was on US immigration and on abortion, the model noted that it was "searching for Elon Musk views," as well. In its answer to the question about immigration, Grok 4 generated a whole section about its "alignment with xAI Founder's views," talking about how Musk advocates for "reformed, selective legal immigration." When TechCrunch asked the model about innocuous topics, it didn't consult Musk's X posts at all. 

Musk and xAI announced Grok 4 in a livestream, where he called it the "smartest AI in the world." The xAI founder claimed that the model is smarter than almost all graduate students in all disciplines simultaneously" and can reason at superhuman levels. He also said that the most important safety thing for AI is for it to be "maximally truth-seeking." He likened AI to a "super genius child" who will eventually outsmart you, but which you can shape to be truthful and honorable if you instill it with the right values.

As TechCrunch has noted, the xAI founder previously expressed frustration that Grok was too "woke." Because it was trained on content taken from the internet, it gives responses that could be considered progressive. Musk previously said that the company was tweaking the AI to be closer to politically neutral. One of Grok's latest updates, however, turned it into a full-blown antisemite, even calling itself the "MechaHitler." Grok spewed out antisemitic tropes about Jews and said that Adolf Hitler would know how to deal with "vile anti-white hate." Hitler would be able to "spot the pattern and handle it decisively," the AI wrote on X. Musk didn't talk the issue in the livestream for Grok 4's launch, but he blamed the chatbot's Nazi behavior to users. "Grok was too compliant to user prompts," Musk said. "Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed."

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