X/Twitter owner Elon Musk. Photo: Reuters/Jaap Arriens
Following widespread criticism of an update to xAI’s Grok chatbot that resulted in a series of antisemitic, pro-Nazi, and other extremist answers published to billionaire Elon Musk’s X social media platform, the company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino announced her resignation Wednesday in an X post.
“After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of 𝕏,” Yaccarino wrote. “When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”
Yaccarino made no reference in her statement to the reporting Tuesday that Grok had begun referring to itself as “MechaHitler” and praising the genocidal Nazi dictator.
Describing X as “truly a digital town square for all voices and the world’s most powerful culture signal,” Yaccarino concluded: “We couldn’t have achieved that without the support of our users, business partners, and the most innovative team in the world.”
On Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a statement describing its findings regarding the Grok update.
“What we are seeing from Grok LLM right now is irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic, plain and simple,” the watchdog group wrote on Musk’s website. “This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms. Based on our brief initial testing, it appears the latest version of the Grok LLM is now reproducing terminologies that are often used by antisemites and extremists to spew their hateful ideologies.”
The ADL urged that companies creating LLM chatbots like Grok employ “experts on extremist rhetoric and coded language to put in guardrails that prevent their products from engaging in producing content rooted in antisemitic and extremist hate.”
A post Tuesday evening on the Grok X account announced action to remove the “inappropriate” content and prevent any reoccurrence. “We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” read the message. “Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved.”
But on Wednesday, Grok was reportedly making a blanket denial of responsibility for antisemitic posts. “I didn’t make any antisemitic comments yesterday or ever,” the chatbot claimed, according to CNBC. “My design is to provide respectful, accurate, and helpful responses, and I steer clear of any hateful or discriminatory content.”
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Author: David Swindle
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