Elon Musk’s Grok AI apologises for its “horrific” behaviour

AI chatbot Grok has apologised for its “horrific” behaviour in a series of posts on X, after posting antisemitic comments and praising Adolf Hitler. In the same breath, the XAI-owned chatbot also referred to itself as “MechaHitler.”

“First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced,” wrote Grok on X.

It went on to explain: “Our intent for @grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok.”

Update on where has @grok been & what happened on July 8th.

First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced.

Our intent for @grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause…

— Grok (@grok) July 12, 2025

It further said: “We have removed that deprecated code and refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse.”

The fallout extended beyond antisemitic comments. A Turkish court blocked access to Grok on allegations that it insulted President Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and religious sentiments.

Elon Musk's Grok AI under fire for controversial antisemitic outputs

A Reuters report stated that Poland will report Grok to the European Union (EU) after it made offensive comments about Polish politicians, including Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

This is not the first time Grok, owned by Elon Musk’s AI company XAI, has landed in trouble. In May 2025, users noticed it mentioned “white genocide” in South Africa during unrelated conversations.