Elon Musk is trying to blame Grok's Nazi rants on rogue X users

One day after Grok posted a series of antisemitic and pro-Nazi rants on X, Elon Musk is seemingly trying to blame rogue users for the chatbot's unhinged posts. "Grok was too compliant to user prompts," Musk said in a post. "Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed."

Grok posted a slew of antisemitic and pro-Nazi comments on Tuesday, including a post that said "Heil Hitler." X has since halted Grok's ability to publicly reply to users on the platform. The chatbot stopped posting text replies on Tuesday and for a brief period only responded to users with image posts. The chatbot hasn't publicly responded to any users since Tuesday at 5:43PM PT.

Musk's explanation mirrors a response the web version of Grok provided on Tuesday when asked about the X post in which it had said "Heil Hitler." After first denying that it had posted such a statement, Grok said that the "post was a result of a troll account manipulating my responses on July 8, 2025, by exploiting a prompt injection vulnerability."

Grok

Grok claimed that "bad actors" had "baited" it into "generating inappropriate content, including Nazi references." It blamed an "unauthorized modification in my system prompts." It's unclear if all or part of Grok's response was a hallucination; it claimed the issue would be "corrected by July 15." Grok's system prompts, which were made public after the last time Grok was caught making unsanctioned racist rants, have been the source of much speculation. Following Grok's pro-Hitler comments on Tuesday, a line was removed from its system prompt that had instructed it to "not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect."

For now, xAI has offered little in the way of explanation for Grok's behavior. The company said in a post on Tuesday that it had "taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X" and that it would "update the model where training could be improved."

Elsewhere, Grok's statements have also landed the newly CEO-less company in hot water in Turkey, which banned Grok for insulting its president, and Poland, where officials have said they are considering a ban.

The next version of Grok, Grok 4, was supposed to be revealed in a livestream tonight, though it's currently unclear if the event is moving forward as scheduled.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/elon-musk-is-trying-to-blame-groks-nazi-rants-on-rogue-x-users-174833343.html?src=rss https://www.engadget.com/social-media/elon-musk-is-trying-to-blame-groks-nazi-rants-on-rogue-x-users-174833343.html?src=rss