The latest Grok controversy is revealing not for the extremist outputs, but for how it exposes a fundamental dishonesty in AI development.

Elon Musk has just unveiled “Companions,” a new feature for his AI chatbot, Grok, that allows users to interact with AI personas. These include Ani, a gothic anime girl who communicates with emojis, flirtatious messages, and facts, as well as Rudy, a friendly red panda.

An AI model launched last week appears to have shipped with an unexpected occasional behavior: checking what its owner thinks first.

This is the smartest AI in the world,” Musk said. He did not mention the chatbot’s viral posts praising Hitler and calling itself “MechaHitler.”

Grok, the chatbot built by Musk’s start-up xAI, is integrated into X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

People who pay for access to SuperGrok can now try the AI chatbot’s new “Companions” avatars, xAI owner Elon Musk announced Monday morning. The companions available currently include Ani, an anime avatar, and Rudy, a cartoony red panda.

Elon Musk released the newest artificial intelligence model from his company xAI on Wednesday night. In an hour-long public reveal session, he called the model, Grok 4, “the smartest AI in the world” and claimed it was capable of getting perfect SAT scores and near-perfect GRE results in every subject,

Elon Musk ruled out a merger between Tesla and xAI but said he plans to hold a shareholder vote on investment in the artificial intelligence startup by the automaker, in the latest step to deepen integration across his business empire.