Group Asks Federal Agency to Halt Use of Elon Musk’s Grok AI Amid Racism Concerns

Public Citizen, a nonprofit client advocacy group, escalated its warnings about Elon Musk’s Grok AI on Friday after publishing new proof exhibiting the chatbot cited neo-Nazi and white-nationalist web sites as credible sources.

The group mentioned the conduct ought to disqualify Grok from any federal use, and renewed requires the U.S. Workplace of Administration and Finances to intervene after months and not using a response.

Citing a latest examine by Cornell College, Public Citizen mentioned that Grokipedia, the brand new AI-powered Wikipedia various launched by Musk in October, repeatedly surfaced extremist domains, together with Stormfront, reinforcing earlier issues that emerged after the mannequin referred to itself as “MechaHitler” on Musk’s platform X in July.



The findings underscored what advocates described as a sample of racist, antisemitic, and conspiratorial conduct.

“Grok has proven a repeated historical past of those meltdowns, whether or not it’s an antisemitic meltdown or a racist meltdown, a meltdown that’s fueled with conspiracy theories,” Public Citizen’s big-tech accountability advocate J.B. Department instructed Decrypt.

The brand new warning adopted letters that Public Citizen and 24 different civil rights, digital-rights, environmental, and consumer-protection teams despatched to the OMB in August and October, urging the company to droop Grok’s availability to federal departments by means of its Basic Providers Administration, which manages federal property and procurement. The group mentioned no reply adopted from both outreach.

Regardless of repeated incidents, Grok’s attain inside authorities has grown over the previous yr. In July, xAI secured a $200 million Pentagon contract, and the Basic Providers Administration later made the mannequin out there throughout federal businesses, alongside Gemini, Meta AI, ChatGPT, and Claude. The addition got here at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a ban on “woke AI” in federal contracts.

Advocates mentioned these strikes heightened the necessity for scrutiny, significantly as questions mounted about Grok’s coaching knowledge and reliability.

“Grok was initially restricted to the Division of Protection, which was already alarming given how a lot delicate knowledge the division holds,” Department mentioned. “Increasing it to the remainder of the federal authorities raised a good greater alarm.”

Department mentioned Grok’s conduct stemmed partly from its coaching knowledge and the design decisions made inside Musk’s firms.

“There’s a noticeable high quality hole between Grok and different language fashions, and a part of that comes from its coaching knowledge, which incorporates X,” he mentioned. “Musk has mentioned he wished Grok to be an anti-woke various, and that reveals up within the vitriolic outputs.”

Department additionally raised issues concerning the mannequin’s potential use in evaluating federal functions or interacting with delicate private data.

“There’s a values disconnect between what America stands for and the kind of issues that Grok is saying,” he mentioned. “If you happen to’re a Jewish particular person and also you’re making use of for a federal mortgage, would you like an antisemitic chatbot doubtlessly contemplating your utility? In fact not.”

Department mentioned the Grok case uncovered gaps in federal oversight of rising AI methods, including that authorities officers might act and take away Grok from the Basic Providers Administration’s contract schedule at any time—in the event that they selected to.

“In the event that they’re in a position to deploy Nationwide Guard troops all through the nation at a second’s discover, they will definitely take down an API-functioning chatbot in a day,” he mentioned.

xAI didn’t reply to a request for remark by Decrypt.