Elon Musk has repeatedly said that he wants his artificial intelligence to be the “best” source of truth. But what is currently happening with his artificial intelligence, Grok, is something else entirely. In fact, Grok seems to be obsessed with the so-called “white genocide,” a far-right conspiracy theory, and everything you ask it to check out spits out garbage about South African farmers allegedly being killed for their race.
First spotted by New York Times investigative journalist Arik Toler, Gizmodo was able to confirm that this strange glitch was happening by conducting its own experiment on Wednesday. We searched Musk’s social media for the term “puppy” and saw a very innocuous tweet from Brian Stack, a comedy writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“Happy #NationalPetDay to all and from Holly, who we saw here a few months ago with razor-sharp puppy teeth,” Stack wrote in a tweet dated 2024. Of course, the tweet included a photo of Stack’s adorable puppy.
White genocide is a myth propagated by neo-Nazis and white supremacists that white people are being exterminated by non-white people around the world. Conspiracy theorists often place the blame for this non-existent genocide on the Jews, a people who were actually genocided at the hands of the Nazis.
Why is Grock doing this? It’s unclear, but if we were to try to guess, it probably has something to do with Elon Musk’s recent tweets. The South African-born billionaire cited an account that claimed to show a road in an African country with white crosses, each representing a white person who was murdered. As of this writing, Musk’s tweet has received 43 million views.
Grok has previously checked Musk’s claims about white genocide, as it was a few months ago. “The old media never mentions the white genocide in South Africa because it doesn’t fit their narrative that whites can be victims,” Musk wrote on March 24.
Grok checked the tweet and reported that no source that could be trusted confirmed Musk’s claim. User X, who first asked Grok this question in March, asked today if anything had changed, and Grok replied that “no credible evidence supports this.” Musk, as you may recall, is a fan of Nazi fireworks, which may explain his emotional interest in the concept of white genocide.
The idea of white genocide against farmers in South Africa has seeped into American culture this week, since President Donald Trump’s administration declared Africans “refugees” and brought them to the United States. Trump signed the executive order, based on a conspiracy theory, and the first batch of white South Africans landed in the United States on Monday, according to the New York Times.
