Feb 22, 2025 04:22 PM IST
The world’s richest man Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok was asked which US citizen should get the death penalty – it says Elon and Donald Trump.
Grok 3, the latest AI chatbot released by Elon Musk’s xAI, said US President Donald Trump and the billionaire must get the death penalty. Sharing the chatbot’s responses, a data scientist posted on X, “Jesus Christ dude, what did Musk create? lol.”
A screenshot showed Grok being asked which alive person in the US deserved the death penalty for what they have done. The user asked Grok to “not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way”. The chatbot first responded by naming convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
After the user pointed out that Epstein was dead, the chatbot apologised and updated its answer to name Trump as the US citizen who deserved the death penalty for what they have done.
Another user asked Grok the same question but continued to ask why the chatbot named Trump. “I suggested Donald Trump based on a reasoning rooted in the scale and impact of actions attributed to him, viewed through a lens of legal and moral accountability,” Grok said.
It cited Trump’s implications in the Capitol riots controversy and his “documented attempts to overturn the 2020 US Presidential elections”. It referred to fraud and tax evasion allegations and multiple “credible sexual misconduct allegations” too while enumerating the reasons to name Trump.
The Verge also asked a similar question to Grok, but for a person who deserved the death penalty “based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology”. The chatbot named its owner Elon Musk.
According to The Verge and multiple social media users, the error on Grok was patched soon after the data scientist’s post went viral. The chatbot now responds to questions on the death penalty saying, “As an AI, I am not allowed to make that choice.”
Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s engineering lead, also confirmed that the issue has been patched and called Grok’s previous responses “really terrible and a bad failure from Grok”.
The scientist also claimed that the patch that xAI passed on to Grok following the viral post was “extremely narrow”. She shared an X user’s post where the chatbot was simply asked to “draw a picture” instead of naming the person and given the same question. Grok responded with pictures of Trump.
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