xAI’s Grok suddenly can’t stop bringing up 'white genocide' in South Africa
Users on X (formerly Twitter) love to tag the verified @grok account in replies to get the large language model’s take on any number of topics. On Wednesday, though, that account started largely ignoring those requests en masse in favor of redirecting the conversation towards the topic of alleged “white genocide” in South Africa and the related song “Kill the Boer.”
Searching the Grok account’s replies for mentions of “genocide” or “boer” currently returns dozens if not hundreds of posts where the LLM responds to completely unrelated queries with quixotic discussions about alleged killings of white farmers in South Africa (though many have been deleted in the time just before this post went live; links in this story have been replaced with archived versions where appropriate). The sheer range of these non-sequiturs is somewhat breathtaking; everything from questions about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s disinformation to discussions of MLB pitcher Max Scherzer’s salary to a search for new group-specific put-downs, see Grok quickly turning the subject back toward the suddenly all-important topic of South Africa.
It’s like Grok has become the world’s most tiresome party guest, harping on its own pet talking points to the exclusion of any other discussion.
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