xAI has updated the AI-powered Grok chatbot after it posted comments about white genocide in South Africa without citing research or sources.
The company found that, on 14 May, an unauthorised 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,” according to a statement from xAI.
“We have conducted a thorough investigation and are implementing measures to enhance Grok’s transparency and reliability.”
The statement concludes that the company has taken the following actions:
- It is publishing its Grok system prompts openly on GitHub. “The public will be able to review them and give feedback to every prompt change that we make to Grok. We hope this can help strengthen your trust in Grok as a truth-seeking AI.”
- The existing code review process for prompt changes was circumvented in this incident. “ We will put in place additional checks and measures to ensure that xAI employees can’t modify the prompt without review.”
- xAI is putting in place a 24/7 monitoring team to respond to incidents with Grok’s answers that are not caught by automated systems, so it can respond faster if all other measures fail.