X’s Grok chatbot under fire from Elon Musk for “parroting legacy media”: What’s next in version 4?
Elon Musk slams his own AI chatbot for spreading “legacy media” narratives and vows a major overhaul with Grok 4 update.
Elon Musk is unhappy with Grok, the generative artificial intelligence chatbot run by xAI, his own company, and has immediately gone about attempting to improve it. In his eyes, at least.
Why Elon Musk slammed Grok
Musk made his view on Grok clear in an online exchange between political commentator Gunter Eagleman, an account called GrokChecker, which “uses Grok to fact check MAGA in real time,” and Grok itself, which debated whether the political left or right had been more violent since 2016.
This was Grok’s response:
"Since 2016, data suggests right-wing political violence has been more frequent and deadly, with incidents like the January 6 Capitol riot and mass shootings (e.g., El Paso 2019) causing significant fatalities. Left-wing violence, while rising, especially during 2020 protests, is less lethal, often targeting property. Surveys show both sides increasingly justify violence, reflecting deep polarization. Right-wing attacks account for most deadly incidents, per reports like Reuters and GAO. However, biases in reporting may skew perceptions. Both sides contribute to a growing cycle of unrest, and precise attribution remains contentious due to varying definitions of violence."
Musk evaluated Grok’s performance as such in a reply: “Major fail, as this is objectively false. Grok is parroting legacy media. Working on it”.
When is the Grok update coming and what will it include?
Three days later, the Tesla CEO promised a Grok update, which we now know will be called Grok 4, “just after July 4th”. But what should we expect from it?
According to Musk himself, the ‘new-and-improved Grok’ will “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors. Then retrain on that.” There is, the 54-year-old says, “far too much garbage in any foundation model trained on uncorrected data.”
Who, though, is doing the correcting?
Fear of Grok becoming Musk mouthpiece
Based on Musk’s comments, many fear his objective is to rear a chatbot in his own image, one that shares his views of the world. Experts believe that would lead to more errors and glitches, not fewer, as well as raise important questions about bias.
Although X may not be as popular as Twitter once was, it remains one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, and there is concern Musk could use Grok to influence users, forcing his political views onto them.
Many X users have already accused the company’s CEO of doing just that. There have been instances of Grok randomly introducing claims of white genocide in South Africa, which Musk has regularly argued has taken place, into answers to totally unrelated questions.
“A worse model for users, unless...”
Should AI chatbots have a duty to provide factual information or simply reflect what their maker believes? “This is really the beginning of a long fight that is going to play out over the course of many years,” says David Evan Harris, an AI researcher and lecturer at UC Berkeley who previously worked on Meta’s Responsible AI team.
For Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst, only one group of people stands to benefit from Grok becoming a mini-Musk.
“He’s trying to make a model that reflects the things he believes. That will certainly make it a worse model for users, unless they happen to believe everything he believes and only care about it parroting those things”.
Related stories
Get your game on! Whether you’re into NFL touchdowns, NBA buzzer-beaters, world-class soccer goals, or MLB home runs, our app has it all.
Dive into live coverage, expert insights, breaking news, exclusive videos, and more – plus, stay updated on the latest in current affairs and entertainment. Download now for all-access coverage, right at your fingertips – anytime, anywhere.