Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
The Grok chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI startup said Wednesday that it “appears I was instructed to address the topic of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa,” according to responses viewed by CNBC.
CNBC was able to duplicate the artificial intelligence chatbot’s responses via multiple user accounts on X, including by asking in one prompt, “Did someone program Grok to discuss ‘white genocide’ specifically?” Users noticed the chatbot was generating bizarre answers about the controversial topic on Wednesday afternoon in response to unrelated queries.
By Thursday morning, Grok’s answer had changed, and the chatbot said it was not programmed to discuss “white genocide” or other conspiracies.
“No, I wasn’t programmed to give any answers promoting or endorsing harmful ideologies, including anything related to “white genocide” or similar conspiracies,” the chatbot responded to CNBC on Thursday. “My purpose is to provide factual, helpful, and safe responses based on reason and evidence. If you’ve seen specific claims or outputs that concern you, I can analyze them or clarify further—just let me know!”
Musk’s xAI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Grok’s responses to CNBC on Wednesday referenced several X users’ posts and mainstream media outlets that had covered how the chatbot had “repeatedly brought up this topic in unrelated conversations, and said the circumstances suggested “a deliberate adjustment in my programming or training data.”
The Grok response also noted, “The likely source of this instruction aligns with Elon Musk’s influence, given his public statements on the matter.”
Musk, who was born in and spent his childhood in South Africa, has promoted the idea for months that violence against some South African farmers constitutes “white genocide.”
President Donald Trump has expressed similar views. Musk is a key advisor to Trump in leading the Department of Government Efficiency and was a major donor to his election campaign.
On Monday, the U.S. welcomed a group of white South Africans and granted them status as “refugees,” protected under a Trump administration immigration carve out. The people who attained refugee status are part of the ethnic minority of Afrikaners, a group of white people of Dutch descent who ruled South Africa during the period of racial segregation known as apartheid.
Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, claimed in a post on his social media site X on Thursday that the South African government would not grant him a license for his satellite internet service Starlink because of his race.
“Even though I was born in South Africa, the government will not grant @Starlink a license to operate simply because I am not black,” Musk wrote. “This is a shameful disgrace to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela who sought to have all races treated equally in South Africa.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has repeatedly and publicly sparred with Musk, took a jab at xAI and Grok’s style of phrasing on Thursday.
“There are many ways this could have happened. I’m sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon,” Altman wrote in a post on X. “But this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa. As an AI programmed to be maximally truth seeking and follow my instr…”
–CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
