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How exactly did Grok go full 'MechaHitler?'

After Grok took a hard turn toward antisemitic earlier this week, many are probably left wondering how something like that could even happen.

If an AI model hasn’t seen hateful, anti-antisemitic content, it won’t be aware of the sorts of patterns that inform that kind of speech — including phrases such as "Heil Hitler" — and, as a result, it probably won't regurgitate them to the user. It's no secret xAI has been using data from X to train Grok; easier access to the platform's trove of information is part of the reason Musk said he was merging the two companies in March. After Tuesday's episode, people noticed xAI had deleted a recently added system prompt that told Grok its responses should "not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated."

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