We can have social media platforms that are sensibly and systematically moderated – without accepting overt censorship
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lon Musk’s chatbot Grok went on a hateful tirade earlier this month. The AI-powered account praised Hitler and posted a series of antisemitic comments over X, the digital platform also owned by Musk. The company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, resigned the next day – though it’s unclear whether her exit was directly related to the bot’s rant.
Posting on X, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said Grok’s behavior was “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic”. xAI and the Grok account on X apologized for the incident, but days later released two chatbot “companions”, including an NSFW anime avatar available to children and a red panda character built to issue crude insults.
Musk, meanwhile, chalked Grok’s behavior up to it being “too eager to please” and to respond to user generated prompts. He said that the issue had been fixed. US politicians and platform advertisers said little, unlike past responses to similar incidents on X. Their silence and Musk’s downplaying of the event speak louder than if we had heard significant public denouncements of the chatbot’s actions from the powers that be.
