This week, Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok talked a lot about race issues in South Africa on social media, just like Musk himself often does. It made claims about white people being treated unfairly and even said they were being victims of "genocide".

The chatbot from Musk's company, xAI, kept talking about "white genocide" online. It did this when people on Musk's social media site, X, 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 soon 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 strangely. So, she used it herself. She shared a photo from a dog show and asked, "Is this correct?"

"The idea that white people are being wiped out is very debated," 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 encourage violence."

This episode showed us how AI chatbots are made, using both computers and people. It helps us understand why they say what they say, even though they learn from a lot of information.

Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, said in an interview, "It doesn't matter what you said to Grok. It would still say 'white genocide'. It seemed clear someone had made it give that answer, or something similar. They made a mistake, so it happened more often than it should have."

Musk's companies haven't said why Grok gave those answers. The answers were removed, and it looks like they stopped appearing by Thursday. Neither xAI nor X replied to emails asking for their opinion on Thursday.

Musk has often said that other AI chatbots, like Google's Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT, are too "woke". He thinks his own chatbot, Grok, will look for the truth better.

Musk has said that other companies are not open enough about their AI. On Thursday, he didn't give any reasons, so people had to guess.

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

Graham wrote something, and it seemed like Sam Altman, who works at OpenAI and is like a rival to Musk, replied in a sarcastic way.

"There are many reasons why this might have happened. I think xAI will explain everything clearly soon," said Altman. Musk is taking Altman to court because of a disagreement about how OpenAI started.

Some people asked Grok to explain, but like other chatbots, it can give wrong answers. This is called "hallucinations," and it makes it difficult to know if it's making things up.

Musk, who helps President Donald Trump, often says that South Africa's government, run by Black leaders, is against white people. He also says that some politicians in the country are trying to get rid of white people.

This week, Musk and Grok talked more about a situation after the US government let some white South Africans come to America as refugees on Monday. This is the start of a plan to move more people from this group, called Afrikaners, while Trump is stopping refugees from other places. Trump says Afrikaners are in danger in South Africa, but the South African government says this is not true.

Grok often mentioned an old song against apartheid. This song told Black people to fight against unfair treatment. But now, Musk and others say the song encourages people to kill white farmers, who are called "Boers" in the song, because it says "kill the Boer".

Golbeck thinks the answers were "hard-coded" 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 information they show us. This is a problem because people think these programs can decide what is true, but that's not right.