The team behind Grok has issued a rare apology and explanation of what went wrong after X's chatbot began spewing antisemitic and pro-Nazi rhetoric earlier this week, at one point even calling itself "MechaHitler.

On Tuesday July 8, X (née Twitter) was forced to switch off the social media platform’s in-built AI, Grok, after it declared itself to be a robot version of Hitler, spewing antisemitic hate and racist conspiracy theories. This followed X owner Elon Musk’s declaration over the weekend that he was insisting Grok be less “politically correct.”

Thursday on the RealClearPolitics radio show -- weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website -- Andrew Walworth, Carl Cannon, and "After Party" host Emily Jashinsky discuss President Trump reportedly leaning toward "amnesty" for some illegal immigrant workers,

MechaHitler is a fictional cyborg version of Adolf Hitler from the 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D, which gained fame in 90s satire and early internet memes.

Rogue AI hallucinations by Grok have given rise to new crypto memes as well as associated tokens on Solana and Ethereum.

Jessica Miglio/Warner Bros.; Kent Nishimura/Getty Images; Vincent Feuray/Hans Lucas via AFP

It claimed to just be “noticing patterns” — patterns like, Grok claimed, that Jewish people were more likely to be radical leftists who want to destroy America. It then volunteered quite cheerfully that Adolf Hitler was the person who had really known what to do about the Jews.

Jewish Insider reports that a group of mainly Democratic lawmakers are asking xAI about some of the worst messages from Grok’s Nazi meltdown, demanding answers about how it happened. As interesting as the answer might be — beyond the changes we already know about — ad-hoc investigation of legal (at least in the US) chatbot speech is probably not a road we want to go down.