You’ll notice that xAI, which is owned by Elon Musk, strongly suggests there was an internal actor who made this “unauthorized modification” but doesn’t use the language you’d expect if it was an employee at the company. And we’re guessing that might have something to do with the fact that it wasn’t an employee necessarily, but the owner.

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, says an “unauthorized modification” led its Grok chatbot to post unsolicited claims on social media about the persecution and “genocide” of white people in South Africa.

AI, Elon Musk's AI company, reported that its Grok AI model generated outputs focusing on "white genocide" due to an unauthorized prompt change, according to a report in Ars Technica. The company's intended prompt for Grok directs it to "provide truthful and based insights.