This week, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, showed a similar interest to its creator by posting opinions on social media about racial politics in South Africa, including claims about the unfair treatment and "genocide" of white people.

xAI's chatbot repeatedly posted about "white genocide" when questioned by users on X, even when the questions were unrelated to South Africa.

One conversation involved the streaming service Max possibly using the HBO name again, while others started with video games or baseball but soon changed to unrelated discussions about supposed calls for violence against white farmers in South Africa. Musk, who was born there, often shares his views on these same subjects on his own X account.

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

"Grok responded to Golbeck by stating that the idea of white genocide is very divisive. He noted that some people claim white farmers are intentionally targeted with violence, citing attacks on farms and phrases such as the 'Kill the Boer' song, which they believe encourages violence."

This episode offered another look into the complex relationship between automation and human design that shapes the responses of generative AI chatbots trained on massive datasets.

"Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, explained in an interview on Thursday that it didn't really matter what you said to Grok. It would still give that 'white genocide' answer. This suggested to her that someone had programmed it to give that response, or similar ones, but had made a mistake, causing it to appear much more often than intended."

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

Musk has often criticised what he calls "woke AI" from competing chatbots like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT. He presents Grok as a "truth-seeking" alternative to them.

Musk has also criticised his competitors for not being open enough about their AI, but on Thursday, the lack of information from his company meant that people had to guess what was happening.

"The fact that Grok is suddenly expressing opinions about white genocide in South Africa seems like a glitch caused by a recent software update. I hope this isn't the case, as it would be very worrying if popular AI systems were being influenced by those in control," tech investor Paul Graham stated on X.

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

"There are several possible explanations for this situation. I expect xAI to offer a complete and clear explanation soon," said Altman, who is currently involved in a legal dispute with Musk related to the origins of OpenAI.

When asked to explain, Grok, like other chatbots, sometimes gives false information or "hallucinates," which makes it difficult to know if its answers are made up.

Musk, who once advised President Donald Trump, has often criticised South Africa's government, led by Black politicians, for allegedly being biased against white people. He has also repeated claims that some political figures in the country are 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. This was the beginning of a bigger plan to move members of the Afrikaner minority group, even as Trump put refugee programs on hold and stopped people from other countries coming in. Trump claims the Afrikaners are being subjected to "genocide" in South Africa, but the South African government strongly disagrees.

Grok's replies sometimes included lyrics from an old anti-apartheid song that encouraged Black people to fight against oppression. However, Elon Musk and others have criticised the song, claiming it promotes violence against white people, as its main lyric is "kill the Boer," where "Boer" refers to a white farmer.

Golbeck suggests Grok's responses may be fixed, as its answers were surprisingly similar despite chatbots usually producing varied outputs. This is worrying, she argues, as more people rely on Grok and similar AI for information.

"It's now very simple for those managing these algorithms to change the information they present as truth," she explained. "This is a real issue, especially when people wrongly believe these algorithms can fairly decide what is true and false."