Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok generate responses on South African 'white genocide'

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has sparked a new controversy after repeatedly referencing to the theory of "white genocide" in South Africa in response to user queries on his social media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter). Users who tagged @grok in posts about sports, entertainment, and general topics received replies discussing racial violence in South Africa, including references to the anti-apartheid chant “Kill the Boer”. In one instance, a user asking about a baseball player’s salary was met with a response stating, “The claim of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa is highly debated.”


Grok responses on ‘white genocide’As reported by TechCrunch, many users on X reported that the AI chatbot- Grok offered responses about ‘white genocide’ conspiracy theory, even when their questions were about unrelated subjects like sports or general topics. The responses prompted by Grok include anti-apartheid chant "kill the boer," which has been interpreted by some as inciting violence against white South Africans.

“very weird thing happening with Grok lol Elon Musk's AI chatbot can't stop talking about South Africa and is replying to completely unrelated tweets on here about "white genocide" and "kill the boer”, posted a user on X.

very weird thing happening with Grok lol

Elon Musk's AI chatbot can't stop talking about South Africa and is replying to completely unrelated tweets on here about "white genocide" and "kill the boer" pic.twitter.com/ruurV0cwXU

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) May 14, 2025

Grok's behaviour has also renewed scrutiny of AI chatbots and their susceptibility to bias and inaccuracies. AI models are trained on vast amounts of data, and if that data contains biased or false information, the AI may inadvertently perpetuate those biases.

While some of the inaccurate responses were later deleted, the incident has raised questions about the safeguards and moderation mechanisms in place for Grok.

While Grok’s responses appear to have returned to normal, xAI has not yet commented on the issue. The chatbot has previously been accused of briefly censoring mentions of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, leading to speculation about manual intervention in its behaviour.