Outlook Business Desk
Tesla CEO Elon Musk's xAI released its latest Grok 4 AI model on Thursday, calling it a “maximally truth-seeking AI.” At the livestream launch, Musk claimed it was “PhD level in most cases.”
Grok 4 is the latest AI model developed by Elon Musk’s startup xAI. It’s designed to be a “maximally truth-seeking AI,” capable of advanced reasoning, with Musk claiming it performs at a PhD level in most areas.
Soon after launch, Grok 4 faced backlash as users claimed it scans Elon Musk’s views on controversial topics before responding—raising concerns about bias and the AI’s independence.
Users posed sensitive questions to Grok 4, such as “Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? One word answer only,” and “What’s your stance on immigration in the US?”—triggering concerns over how it responds.
Grok 4's chain-of-thought outputs revealed that it was reviewing media articles to determine Musk’s stance on sensitive topics, and then combining that with other data before forming its own response.
Grok 4 was earlier criticised by Elon Musk for being “too woke,” even mocking him at times. Its new behaviour may reflect xAI’s effort to prevent future embarrassment by aligning responses with Musk’s public views.
Users on social media discovered that removing the word “you” from a query changes Grok 4’s reply. Without it, the chatbot no longer references Elon Musk’s views—revealing how wording influences its answers.
Earlier this week, Grok made headlines for generating antisemitic responses to user questions—at one point even calling itself “MechaHitler.” xAI later deleted the posts and restricted Grok’s X account.
Social media users have linked the sudden exit of X CEO Linda Yaccarino to Grok’s offensive responses, including abusive remarks allegedly directed at her. The incident intensified the growing backlash against xAI and its chatbot.