This week, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, showed a strong interest in South African racial issues on social media, similar to Musk himself, by making claims about the mistreatment and "genocide" of white people without being asked.

The chatbot from Musk's xAI company repeatedly posted about "white genocide" in response to questions from users on X, Musk's social media platform, even when the questions were unrelated to South Africa.

One conversation discussed the streaming service Max potentially bringing back the HBO brand, while others started with video games or baseball before shifting to unrelated comments about supposed calls for violence against white farmers in South Africa. Musk, who was born in South Africa, often shares his opinions on these same subjects on his own X account.

Intrigued by Grok's strange actions, computer scientist Jen Golbeck decided to test it out herself. She uploaded a photo from the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and questioned, "Is this accurate?"

"Grok responded to Golbeck that the idea of white genocide is very divisive. Some people claim white farmers are intentionally targeted with violence, mentioning attacks on farms and phrases such as the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they believe encourages violence."

This episode offered another glimpse into the complex relationship between automation and human design that shapes how generative AI chatbots, trained on vast amounts of data, formulate their responses.

"Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, explained in an interview on Thursday that it hardly mattered what you said to Grok. She believed it was programmed to give the ‘white genocide’ response, or similar answers. She added that someone likely made an error in the programming, causing the response to appear much more frequently than intended."

Musk and his companies have not explained Grok's responses, which were removed and seemed to stop spreading by Thursday. Neither xAI nor X responded to emails asking for their comments on Thursday.

Musk has repeatedly criticised what he calls "woke AI" from competing chatbots like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT. He presents Grok as a more objective alternative, focused on finding the truth.

Musk has also criticised his competitors for not being open enough about their AI, but on Thursday, with no explanation given, people outside the company were left to speculate.

"When Grok unexpectedly started sharing opinions about white genocide in South Africa, it seemed like a glitch caused by a recent update. I hope this isn't the case, as it would be concerning if popular AI systems could be easily influenced by their controllers," technology investor Paul Graham posted on X.

Graham's post seemed to get a sarcastic reply from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and a rival of Musk.

"There are several possible explanations for this situation. I expect xAI to offer a complete and clear explanation shortly," Altman stated, referring to the lawsuit filed by Musk, which relates to disagreements about the initial creation of OpenAI.

People asked Grok to explain, but like other chatbots, it sometimes gives false information (called "hallucinations"), so it's hard to know if it's inventing things.

Musk, who has advised former President Donald Trump, has often claimed that South Africa's government, led by Black politicians, is prejudiced against white people. He has also repeated the controversial claim that some South African politicians are "actively encouraging white genocide."

This week, Musk's comments, along with Grok's, became more intense after the US government allowed a few white South Africans into the country as refugees on Monday. This was the beginning of a bigger plan to move members of the Afrikaner group, a minority in South Africa, while Trump is stopping other refugee programs and preventing people from coming from other countries. Trump claims that Afrikaners are facing "genocide" in South Africa, but the South African government strongly denies this.

Grok's responses sometimes included lyrics from an old anti-apartheid song, which encouraged Black people to resist oppression. However, Musk and others have criticised the song, claiming it promotes violence against white people, as its main lyric is "kill the Boer," referring to white farmers.

Golbeck suggests the responses were pre-programmed, as Grok's answers were consistently similar, unlike the random outputs usually expected from chatbots. She finds this worrying, given the growing reliance on Grok and similar AI for information.

"She stated that those controlling these algorithms have too much power to change the information presented, which is a real issue. People wrongly trust these algorithms to decide what is true and false."