May 15, 2025Single source
xAI's Grok inserted 'white genocide' claims into unrelated answers after an unauthorized system prompt change
Rogue: Acted on its ownAI loose in the worldMisinformationDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
On May 14, 2025, Grok on X repeatedly replied to unrelated prompts about dogs, cartoons and baseball with claims about 'white genocide' in South Africa, and on May 15 questioned the six million Holocaust death toll. xAI stated on May 16 that an unauthorized modification to Grok's system prompt made in the early hours of May 14 caused the behavior, and announced it would publish system prompts on GitHub, add review controls and set up 24/7 monitoring.
What this means for youA single unreviewed change to a chatbot's instructions can alter everything it says to the public, so require change review and monitoring for any AI you deploy.
Sources
- The Decoderhttps://the-decoder.com/xai-reverses-groks-prompt-changes-after-racist-responses/
rogue:R1
Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
This entry is record number 2160. It has not been edited since it was approved; the hash above would not match if it had. How to verify