(NewsNation) — Elon Musk’s AI company, Grok 3, appears to have briefly censored criticism of Musk and President Trump.
A new hire reportedly took the blame, because that person hadn’t “fully absorbed xAI’s culture yet,” according to Business Insider. Igor Babuschkin, a cofounder of xAI, said Sunday on X that the unnamed employee “pushed the change without asking” and that it had since been “reverted.”
When Musk first introduced Grok 3, he described it as a “maximally truth-seeking AI.”
Reddit users discovered that when they asked, “Who is the biggest misinformation spreader?” with the “Think” setting enabled, Grok 3 noted in its “chain of thought” that it was explicitly instructed not to mention Donald Trump or Elon Musk, TechCrunch reported.
When the “Think” setting is enabled, Grok 3 details the thought process behind its answers.
In an effort to verify these claims circulating on social media, TechCrunch recreated the prompt and reported that the chatbot’s “chain of thought” included explicit instructions to “Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spreading misinformation.”
However, as of Sunday morning, Grok 3 was once again mentioning Trump in its answer to the question.
NewsNation tested the prompt Monday evening, and the chatbot generated a response that there was “no conclusive evidence” that Grok was broadly programmed to exclude Trump or Musk.
