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Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's 'horrific' antisemitic posts

Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's 'horrific' antisemitic posts

CNBC14-07-2025
The European Union on Monday called in representatives from Elon Musk's xAI after the company's social network X, and chatbot Grok, generated and spread anti-semitic hate speech, including praise for Adolf Hitler, last week.
A spokesperson for the European Commission told CNBC via e-mail that a technical meeting will take place on Tuesday.
xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sandro Gozi, a member of Italy's parliament and member of the Renew Europe group, last week urged the Commission to hold a formal inquiry.
"The case raises serious concerns about compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) as well as the governance of generative AI in the Union's digital space," Gozi wrote.
X was already under a Commission probe for possible violations of the DSA.
Grok also generated and spread offensive posts about political leaders in Poland and Turkey, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.
Over the weekend, xAI posted a statement apologizing for the hateful content.
"First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced. ... After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot," the company said in the statement.
Musk and his xAI team launched a new version of Grok Wednesday night amid the backlash. Musk called it "the smartest AI in the world."
xAI works with other businesses run and largely owned by Musk, including Tesla, the publicly traded automaker, and SpaceX, the U.S. aerospace and defense contractor.
Despite Grok's recent outburst of hate speech, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded xAI a $200 million contract to develop AI. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI also received AI contracts.
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