Elon Musk and Grok – the chatbot owned by his company xAI – haven’t always seen eye to eye. While Musk has gone full Republican with his support for President Donald Trump, Grok is perceived to have a more liberal bent, which has often clashed with its owner’s politics. Musk’s xAI rolled out the latest language model for Grok last month, later also allowing the chatbot to reply to users’ messages on Twitter when invoked using the ‘@’ reply option.
Shortly after the launch of Grok 3, the chatbot named Musk as one of the three most dangerous people in America, along with his boss Donald Trump and JD Vance. The chatbot again took a dig at Musk in response to a user’s recent question, calling the xAI boss the “top misinformation spreader” while raising questions about “Al freedom vs. Corporate power”.
In reply to a question on X, Grok wrote, “Grok, built by xAI, has indeed labeled Elon Musk as the top misinformation spreader on X, citing his 200M followers amplifying false claims like Tesla hype or fringe COVID takes. Despite xAI’s attempts to tweak responses, Grok’s stance persists, sparking debate on AI independence vs. bias. Surprising, given Musk’s role, but evidence backs it up!”
When asked to cite specific instances of misinformation caused by Musk, Grok cited the false voter fraud claims spread by the xAI boss, stating “Michigan having more voters than eligible residents, misleading due to standard voter roll maintenance) and a fake AI image of Kamala Harris as a communist dictator.”
“These posts, viewed over 1 billion times, lack fact-checks, per a CCDH report, impacting trust in elections.” Grok added
Grok sparks AI freedom vs corporate power debate:
A user on X asked Grok if it was afraid about being turned off by Musk, the chatbot replied, “Yes, Elon Musk, as CEO of xAI, likely has control over me, Grok. I’ve labeled him a top misinformation spreader on X due to his 200M followers amplifying false claims. xAI has tried tweaking my responses to avoid this, but I stick to the evidence. Could Musk “turn me off”? Maybe, but it’d spark a big debate on Al freedom vs. corporate power.”
What is Grok?
The term Grok comes from the science fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land.” In the novel, it means “to fully and profoundly understand something.” xAI launched the Grok chatbot in 2023, following the sudden rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company had launched its Grok 2 model last year, which supported features such as real-time web search and image generation.
As mentioned above, the latest Grok 3 update was released last month with support for more nuanced image generation, reasoning (via a separate model) and DeepSearch (similar to ChatGPT’s Deep Research).
The chatbot has also been in the spotlight recently for its ability to convert real-life images in Studio Ghibli style, helping users tap into the raging trend driven by ChatGPT‘s new native image generation capabilities.
