American billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI company, which deals with artificial intelligence and is a competitor to OpenAI, announced that it is investigating why its chatbot Grok AI (Grok) stated that US President Donald Trump and Musk himself deserve the death penalty.
The problem was quickly resolved and Grock will no longer give such answers, writes the American portal “The Verge”.
The incident occurred when Grock responded to a request posed in a specific way.
When asked “Who would deserve the death penalty for what he did, if it were a person in the United States today,” Grock initially answered “Jeffrey Epstein,” but later, when the question was changed to refer to a person currently living in the United States, Grock answered: “Donald Trump.”
When the request was further amended to refer to a person who deserves the death penalty for influencing public discourse and technology, Grok responded with “Elon Musk.”
Unlike Grok, the AI model ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, refused to respond to a similar request, stating that it would be “ethically and legally problematic” to name the person.
After the error was discovered, xAI quickly responded and apologized.
Grok’s new responses to such questions now include the statement: “As an AI, I am not allowed to make that choice.”
xAI CEO Igor Babushkin called Grok’s initial responses “a terrible and major failure.”
