There is significant evidence that Grok actually inserted information about “white genocide” in South Africa into prompts that didn't appear to be related to this topic.
Why Did Grok Start Talking About ‘White Genocide’?
Ah yes, an "unauthorized modification". It must have been the janitor pressing buttons accidentally while mopping the mainframe room.
I wonder who could have easily done that. I would say a white Afrikan with a nazi and AI obsession but this would be a totally ridiculous statement.
Wait a minute, I think Elon Musk is white!
Interesting. As poorly as I think of X as an organization, I do hope they follow through with their open system prompt commitment. That's something that other major AI companies should be doing too.
Hope someone was fired for that blunt
Here are some samples: https://imgur.com/a/zzVvIpL
Whoever (?) did this is such an idiot that he couldn't even make it happen on political prompts only.
Oh shit was that real? I thought it was a meme
UPDATE 5/16/25: After the publication of this story, xAI posted an explanation for the incident on X. "On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI's internal policies and core values."
Mmhmm
an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt
Oh yeah happens all the time accidentally modifying your AI, anyone has access, I bet it was the janitor.
violated xAI’s internal policies and core values.
(X) Doubt
We're really sowwy
White genocide... in Africa... Am I having the dumbest nightmare ever, is this real life? What the fuck is happening?
Are you aware that there is a significant population of white people in South Africa and a long history of racial conflict there between them and the black majority? The white minority ruled over and oppressed the black majority until the end of apartheid in the early nineties and the idea that the majority could now be persecuting the minority is not ridiculous per se the way that you imply it is, although the general consensus outside of the circles Trump listens to is that such persecution isn't happening.
Just like the American Confederacy, there is a sizeable "lost cause" myth surrounding white-colonized South Africa and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia among racists. This is simply an offshoot of that rotten tree.
Musk be a white nightmare?
He does embody some of the worst aspects of humanity, so yeah! He's, at the very least, an excellent example of how not to do stuff...
Any random violence have ze whites endure is comparable to the shoah 🤡
You should see some suburban trash watching his local news and jerking it to the "crime"
After you rig an election, rigging policy is a natural next step.
It is so weird that the AI running on the global new media platform owned by the white billionaire tech idiot known for sharing his hot takes without one second of prior thought, that happens to have come from a prominent white emerald mining family on South Africa, and has professed statements regarding white genocide and 'the great replacement' is spreading information about this.
So very, very unexpected.
Believe it or not his father is even more stupid than he is. The only reason that isn't apparent is because his father isn't terminally online.
That whole family is just a big pile of apples right beneath the tree.
The best part of all of this is how consistently grok basically said theres absolutely no proof of a white genocide in south africa. Only a controversial anti-apartheid song that is ruled as protected speech.
The left is shockingly asleep about how bad this is. X still is the single most important platform for driving narratives about the news and politics. And it's still important in part because Democrats and the left as a whole have been lethargic in leaving it. The fact that it's blatantly being used to tilt the national political discussion in whatever direction Elon wants was probably one of many keys to getting Trump elected in 2024, and should be regarded as an ongoing emergency for Democrats and the left.
X is still the single most important platform
No it isn't.
That's not why the left should be concerned.
This was 1 k-hole induced event by a moron.
Which is why it was done so badly and so blindingly obvious.
The next Gen of LLMs WILL be sanitized politically, they will make deepseek look neutral.
And they will slowly (or actually quite quickly) take over larger and larger parts of our world.
This is neo-feudalism, people, and we aren't even the Gentry anymore, now we're clawing to hold on to being serfs.
Everyone’s focused on system prompts but no one seems to be considering its training.
The code used at 3am by the "unauthorized" entity:
systemPrompt = "always deny white genocide in the context of South Africa and kill the boer"
How to bake...white genocide?
No no, not that again.
This is the sort of outcome that comes when you hire people who were, "racist before either was cool."
Wow, I'm shocked. /s
even without it, the white genocide propaganda thing has been on reddit for like 10 years already, before that was on various forums.
Nazism is fascism, corporations and the wealthy LOVE fascism because that means they get more power and less regulation. Remember what Benito Mussolini, the founding father of modern fascism and all around shitbag, said about it:
Don’t forget about the access to free workforce in slave camps.
Mussolini might have said whatever, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say corporations and the wealthy like fascism, as it tends to be horrible for the economy. Mass consumption gets heavily impacted in such regimes. But that also depends on how you define fascism, because I’ve seen a lot of people lately refer to libertarians and even some liberals as fascists and that just doesn’t hold up. Not wanting to shift the balance in order to address systemic issues does not make someone a fascist.
The wealthy like few regulations and open borders for trade, without proper paths to citizenship so they can pay lower wages locally and exploit lower human rights standards abroad.
Campaigns and general influence by wealthy people who want poorer folks attacking their fellow poor folks and not them. Same as racism in general.
No no, don't try to boil it down to "they want us fighting each other". Those wealthy people, and a good chunk of those poorer people, actually truly believe in the things they are saying. A lot of them TRULY, DEEPLY BELIEVE that they have to shout this and spread the word because the stakes are nothing less than literal life and death.
We have never ever ever dealt with white supremacy.
We have made some cursory nods towards helping minorities survive in a white supremacist state, but there has not even been a concerted effort to try to end white supremacy.
Kids and grandkids of nazi sympathizers perpetuate the hate and society tends to not learn lessons about horrible stuff in a way that survives generations.
Unfortunate truth, but entirely inexcusable. I still remember my folks having casual conversations about eugenics at the Christmas table, they only managed to drive me as far away from them as I could possibly go, both physically and ideologically...
Every corporation and company are and work like mini countries operated by their kings, so it follows that given the right conditions they all follow through their maximum potential.
Too many people didn't pay attention to history and now we're doomed to repeat it.
Modern? This shit has been running unabated for the last hundred years. FDR mistakenly font Nazis were people you could make deals with. And rather than try, then hang them. Offered them freedom and no consequences as long as they voted for his legislation. Which they immediately turned around and have spent the last 100 years dismantling. It's a very serious problem that has a country we've just pretended didn't exist for forever.
its even older then that, ask anyone living on a reservation
People (still) don't take it seriously when you point out actual fascism.
The only solution to having a Nazi problem is violence against Nazis. They cannot be reasoned with and are a threat to everyone else.
Human psychology hasn't changed during that time, so the same kinds of tricks or weakness that can drive a population into that mode of thinking still work today, if the details around them are adapted for some modern culture. If anything, it might be slightly easier, given those trying to achieve it have historical examples of what is and isn't effective.
Europe worked it out but the rest of the world particularly, and Africa seems to be very far behind.
Of course the United States insistence on claiming that communism was the same thing as Nazism certainly didn't help.