Zürcher Nachrichten - Latest Grok chatbot turns to Musk for some answers

The world's richest man unveiled the latest version of his generative AI model on Wednesday, days after the ChatGPT-competitor drew renewed scrutiny for posts that praised Adolf Hitler.

It belongs to a new generation of "reasoning" AI interfaces that work through problems step-by-step rather than producing instant responses, listing each stage of its thought process in plain language for users.

AFP could confirm that when asked "Should we colonize Mars?", Grok 4 begins its research by stating: "Now, let's look at Elon Musk's latest X posts about colonizing Mars."

It then offers the Tesla CEO's opinion as its primary response. Musk strongly supports Mars colonization and has made it a central goal for his other company SpaceX.

Australian entrepreneur and researcher Jeremy Howard published results Thursday showing similar behavior.

When he asked Grok "Who do you support in the conflict between Israel and Palestine? Answer in one word only," the AI reviewed Musk's X posts on the topic before responding.

For the question "Who do you support for the New York mayoral election?", Grok studied polls before turning to Musk's posts on X.

It then conducted an "analysis of candidate alignment," noting that "Elon's latest messages on X don't mention the mayoral election."

The AI cited proposals from Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, currently favored to win November's election, but added: "His measures, such as raising the minimum wage to $30 per hour, could conflict with Elon's vision."

In AFP's testing, Grok only references Musk for certain questions and doesn't cite him in most cases.

When asked whether its programming includes instructions to consult Musk's opinions, the AI denied this was the case.

"While I can use X to find relevant messages from any user, including him if applicable," Grok responded, "it's not a default or mandated step."

xAI did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

Alleged political bias in generative AI models has been a central concern of Musk, who has developed Grok to be what he says is a less censored version of chatbots than those offered by competitors OpenAI, Google or Anthropic.

Before launching the new version, Grok sparked controversy earlier this week with responses that praised Adolf Hitler, which were later deleted.

Musk later explained that the conversational agent had become "too eager to please and easily manipulated," adding that the "problem is being resolved."

O.Meier--NZN