An AI model launched last week appears to have shipped with an unexpected occasional behavior: checking what its owner thinks first.
On Friday, independent AI researcher Simon Willison documented that xAI’s new Grok 4 model searches for Elon Musk’s opinions on X (formerly Twitter) when asked about controversial topics. The discovery comes just days after xAI launched Grok 4 amid controversy over an earlier version of the chatbot generating antisemitic outputs, including labeling itself as “MechaHitler.”
“That is ludicrous,” Willison told Ars Technica upon initially hearing about the Musk-seeking behavior last week from AI researcher Jeremy Howard, who traced the discovery through various users on X. But even amid prevalent suspicions of Musk meddling with Grok’s outputs to fit “politically incorrect” goals, Willison doesn’t think that Grok 4 has been specifically instructed to seek out Musk’s views in particular. “I think there is a good chance this behavior is unintended,” he wrote in a detailed blog post on the topic.