This week, Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok talked a lot about race issues in South Africa on social media, making claims about white people being treated unfairly.

The chatbot from Musk's company, xAI, wrote about "white genocide" on X, Musk's social media site. It did this when people asked it different questions, even questions not about South Africa.

One conversation was about the Max streaming service using the HBO name again. Other conversations were about video games or baseball, but they quickly changed to talking about possible violence against white farmers in South Africa. Musk, who was born in South Africa, often shares his opinions on these topics on his own X account.

Jen Golbeck, a computer scientist, wanted to know why Grok was acting strange. So, she used it herself. She shared a photo she took at a dog show and asked, "Is this correct?"

"The idea that white people are facing genocide is very argued about," Grok said to Golbeck. "Some people say that white farmers are being attacked on purpose. They talk about attacks on farms and songs like 'Kill the Boer', which they think makes people want to hurt them."

This show gave us another look at how AI chatbots work. They learn from lots of information and use both computers and people to decide what to say.

Golbeck, a professor, said in an interview that it didn't matter what you said to Grok. She said it would still give the "white genocide" answer. It seemed clear that someone had made it give that answer, or something similar. They made a mistake, so it was happening more often than it should have.

Musk and his companies haven't said why Grok gave those answers. The answers were removed and seemed to stop appearing by Thursday. xAI and X didn't reply to emails asking for their comments on Thursday.

Musk has often said that other AI chatbots, like Google's Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT, are too "woke". He thinks his chatbot, Grok, is better because it tries to find the truth.

Musk has said that other AI companies are not open enough about their systems. But on Thursday, he didn't explain anything, so people had to guess what was happening.

"Paul Graham, a well-known tech investor, said on X that Grok suddenly sharing opinions about white genocide in South Africa seems like a mistake caused by a recent update. He hopes that's not the case, because it would be very bad if popular AIs were easily changed by the people in charge."

Graham wrote something online, and Sam Altman, who is like a rival to Musk, seemed to reply with a sarcastic comment.

"This could have happened in different ways. I think xAI will explain everything clearly soon," said Altman. Musk is suing Altman because of a problem that started when OpenAI was created.

Some people asked Grok to explain, but like other chatbots, it can say things that are not true. This is called "hallucinations," and it makes it difficult to know if it is making things up.

Musk used to advise President Donald Trump. He has often said that South Africa's government, which has Black leaders, is against white people. He has also said that some politicians in South Africa are trying to get rid of white people.

This week, Musk and Grok talked more about white South Africans coming to the U.S. as refugees. This happened after the Trump government let a few of them come on Monday. They are planning to bring more Afrikaners, a small group in South Africa, to the U.S. Trump is stopping refugees from other countries but says the Afrikaners are in danger in South Africa. The South African government says this is not true.

Grok often mentioned the words of an old song against apartheid. This song told Black people to fight unfair treatment. Now, Musk and others say it encourages violence against white people. The main words of the song are "kill the Boer," and "Boer" means a white farmer.

Golbeck thinks the answers were “fixed” because Grok’s answers were very similar, even though chatbot answers are usually random. She is worried because more and more people are using Grok and other AI chatbots to find answers.

She said that it's very easy for the people who control these computer programs to change the truth that they show. This is a problem because people think these programs can decide what is true, but that's not right.