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HOW DO YOU STOP AN AI MODEL TURNING NAZI? WHAT THE GROK DRAMA REVEALS
ABOUT AI TRAINING  
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Aaron J. Snoswell
July 14, 2025
The Conversation
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_ Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot embedded in X
(formerly Twitter) and built by Elon Musk’s company xAI, is back in
the headlines after calling itself “MechaHitler” and producing
pro-Nazi remarks. _

, Anne Fehres and Luke Conroy & AI4Media

 

Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot embedded in X (formerly
Twitter) and built by Elon Musk’s company xAI, is back in the
headlines after calling itself “MechaHitler
[[link removed]]”
and producing pro-Nazi remarks.

The developers have apologised
[[link removed]] for the
“inappropriate posts” and “taken action to ban hate speech”
from Grok’s posts on X. Debates about AI bias have been revived too.

But the latest Grok controversy is revealing not for the extremist
outputs, but for how it exposes a fundamental dishonesty in AI
development. Musk claims to be building a “truth-seeking
[[link removed]]”
AI free from bias, yet the technical implementation reveals systemic
ideological programming.

This amounts to an accidental case study in how AI systems embed their
creators’ values, with Musk’s unfiltered public presence making
visible what other companies typically obscure.

What is Grok?

Grok is an AI chatbot with “a twist of humor and a dash of rebellion
[[link removed]]” developed by xAI
[[link removed]], which also owns the X social media platform.

The first version of Grok launched in 2023. Independent evaluations
suggest the latest model, Grok 4, outpaces competitors on
“intelligence” tests [[link removed]]. The chatbot
is available standalone and on X
[[link removed]].

xAI states [[link removed]] “AI’s knowledge should be
all-encompassing and as far-reaching as possible”. Musk has
previously positioned Grok
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as a truth-telling alternative to chatbots accused of being “woke”
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by right-wing commentators
[[link removed]].

But beyond the latest Nazism scandal, Grok has made headlines for
generating threats of sexual violence
[[link removed]],
bringing up “white genocide” in South Africa
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and making insulting statements about politicians
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The latter led to its ban in Turkey
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So how do developers imbue an AI with such values and shape chatbot
behaviour? Today’s chatbots are built using large language models
(LLMs), which offer several levers developers can lean on.

What makes an AI ‘behave’ this way?

PRE-TRAINING

First, developers curate the data used during pre-training – the
first step in building a chatbot. This involves not just filtering
unwanted content, but also emphasising desired material.

GPT-3 was shown Wikipedia up to six times more than other datasets as
OpenAI considered it higher quality
[[link removed]]. Grok is trained on various
sources, including posts from X
[[link removed]],
which might explain why Grok has been reported to check Elon Musk’s
opinion
[[link removed]] on
controversial topics.

Musk has shared that xAI curates Grok’s training data
[[link removed]], for example to
improve legal knowledge and to remove LLM-generated content
[[link removed]] for quality
control
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He also appealed to the X community for difficult “galaxy brain”
problems [[link removed]] and facts
that are “politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true
[[link removed]]”.

We don’t know if these data were used, or what quality-control
measures were applied.

FINE-TUNING

The second step, fine-tuning, adjusts LLM behaviour using feedback.
Developers create detailed manuals outlining their preferred ethical
stances, which either human reviewers or AI systems then use as a
rubric to evaluate and improve the chatbot’s responses, effectively
coding these values into the machine.

A Business Insider investigation
[[link removed]]
revealed xAI’s instructions to human “AI tutors” instructed them
to look for “woke ideology” and “cancel culture”. While the
onboarding documents said Grok shouldn’t “impose an opinion that
confirms or denies a user’s bias”, they also stated it should
avoid responses that claim both sides of a debate have merit when they
do not.

SYSTEM PROMPTS

The system prompt – instructions provided before every conversation
– guides behaviour once the model is deployed.

To its credit, xAI publishes Grok’s system prompts
[[link removed]]. Its instructions to
“assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased”
and “not shy away from making claims which are politically
incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated” were likely key
factors in the latest controversy.

These prompts are being updated daily at the time of writing, and
their evolution
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fascinating case study in itself.

GUARDRAILS

Finally, developers can also add guardrails – filters that block
certain requests or responses. OpenAI claims it doesn’t permit
ChatGPT [[link removed]] “to
generate hateful, harassing, violent or adult content”. Meanwhile,
the Chinese model DeepSeek censors discussion of Tianamen Square
[[link removed]].

Ad-hoc testing when writing this article suggests Grok is much less
restrained in this regard than competitor products.

The transparency paradox

Grok’s Nazi controversy highlights a deeper ethical issue: would we
prefer AI companies to be explicitly ideological and honest about it,
or maintain the fiction of neutrality while secretly embedding their
values?

Every major AI system reflects its creator’s worldview – from
Microsoft Copilot’s risk-averse corporate perspective to Anthropic
Claude’s safety-focused ethos. The difference is transparency.

Musk’s public statements make it easy to trace Grok’s behaviours
back to Musk’s stated beliefs about “woke ideology” and media
bias. Meanwhile, when other platforms
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misfire [[link removed]] spectacularly
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we’re left guessing whether this reflects leadership views,
corporate risk aversion, regulatory pressure, or accident.

This feels familiar. Grok resembles Microsoft’s 2016
hate-speech-spouting Tay chatbot
[[link removed]],
also trained on Twitter data and set loose on Twitter before being
shut down.

But there’s a crucial difference. Tay’s racism emerged from user
manipulation and poor safeguards – an unintended consequence.
Grok’s behaviour appears to stem at least partially from its design.

The real lesson from Grok is about honesty in AI development. As these
systems become more powerful and widespread (Grok support in Tesla
vehicles was just announced
[[link removed]]), the question isn’t
whether AI will reflect human values. It’s whether companies will be
transparent about whose values they’re encoding and why.

Musk’s approach is simultaneously more honest (we can see his
influence) and more deceptive (claiming objectivity while programming
subjectivity) than his competitors.

In an industry built on the myth of neutral algorithms, Grok reveals
what’s been true all along: there’s no such thing as unbiased AI
– only AI whose biases we can see with varying degrees of
clarity.[The Conversation]

Aaron J. Snoswell
[[link removed]],
Senior Research Fellow in AI Accountability, _Queensland University of
Technology
[[link removed]]_

This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

* artificial intelligence
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* Elon Musk
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* Grok
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* nazism
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