Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence tool Grok went haywire for users of the social media platform X on Wednesday, responding to innocuous queries about things like baseball and puppies with information on South Africa and a conspiracy theory called “white genocide.” It was widespread and extremely weird to witness.

Elon Musk's xAI confirms an 'unauthorized modification' caused the chatbot's political outbursts. The issue highlights how AI systems are direct reflections of the people behind them.

Grok, the AI model from Elon Musk’s xAI, was sending strange responses to people on X earlier on Wednesday. In responses to a number of people, Grok focused on debunking claims of white genocide in South Africa – even when tagged into a post about totally unrelated topics.