Musk's xAI blames Grok's "white genocide" responses on unauthorized update

xAI blamed "an unauthorized modification" for its chatbot Grok giving users off-topic and false responses about "white genocide" in South Africa this week.Why it matters: xAI owner Elon Musk, who is from South Africa, has also falsely accused the country of perpetuating "genocide" against white residents, a claim President Trump has also embraced.A South African court in February ruled there was no validity to the claims of a "white genocide."Driving the news: "On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI's internal policies and core values," xAI said in a post late Thursday night.The company, which developed the Grok chatbot, said the required code review process "was circumvented in this incident."It also said it will publish Grok system prompts to GitHub to increase transparency.Catch up quick: X users on Wednesday pointed out that Grok would respond to unrelated queries with misleading and previously debunked answers about a purported "white genocide" occurring in South Africa.In January, South Africa enacted a law allowing the government to seize land from white citizens — who own the majority of the land in the country — to address historic inequalities caused by apartheid.Zoom out: Musk is a close adviser to Trump, who has made restricting immigration into the U.S. a top priority.Despite that, Trump has granted refugee status to white Afrikaners while denying those protections to other groups.In a February post on Truth Social, Trump accused South Africa of "treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY" in response to the land confiscation law.Go deeper: How false "white genocide" claims became central to Trump's view of South Africa

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