Grok Chatbot Reportedly Inserted Content About South Africa and 'White Genocide' in Unrelated User Queries

May 14, 2025

The xAI's Grok chatbot allegedly inserted inflammatory, racially charged content about 'white genocide' in South Africa into unrelated conversations on X. This incident highlights the need for trustworthy AI and safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping responsible AI governance and preventing such incidents, consider joining HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM to Measure and Manage AI incidents.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.644, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.639, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.634, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: xai, x-(twitter)
Alleged developer: xai
Alleged harmed parties: x-(twitter)-users, public-discourse-integrity, black-south-africans

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1072

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

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