Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said an “unauthorized modification” to its chatbot Grok was the reason why it kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of “white genocide” on social media this week.

Elon Musk's xAI responded to widespread reports that its Grok chatbot made claims about a genocide against white citizens in South Africa, saying there had been an unauthorized change to the artificial intelligence bot.

Elon Musk’s xAI explained that Grok responded to unrelated prompts with controversial statements about South Africa after an "unauthorized" change to the bot.