France has opened an investigation into billionaire Republican financier Elon Musk’s company after his AI chatbot Grok promoted Holocaust denial.
Officials in the French government told the Associated Press that the investigation began after a post circulated showing a Grok response to a user. That response falsely claimed that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were used for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus.”
In reality, the gas chambers were used for the mass murder of prisoners at the camp, who were mostly Jewish people. Historians estimate that around 1.1 million human beings were killed at the camp in less than five years.
After the incorrect response was publicly posted and shared, Grok was changed to respond with historically accurate information—without acknowledgement of its previous inaccurate and antisemitic response.
A complaint has also been filed against Musk’s company by the France-based League for Human Rights. In a statement the league said the Grok response was a “denial of crimes against humanity.”
Musk has had several instances of supporting or promoting antisemitism and racism.
In January, at an event celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration, on which Musk spent millions to help elect Trump, Musk gave a Nazi salute. Despite video evidence of the incident, Musk has denied it.
Musk’s recently launched online encyclopedia, Grokipedia, is filled with inaccuracies and racist entries. For instance, one entry denies the reality that slavery played a key role in the economic development of the United States.
Researchers at Cornell University recently analyzed Grokipedia and found 42 instances of the site using the neo-Nazi website Stormfront as a source of information.
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In July, the Grok chatbot began referring to itself as “MechaHitler.”
After Musk bought Twitter, the site began to significantly increase its promotion of racist and antisemitic tweets.
When his projects aren’t promoting hate, the algorithm behind Grok has clearly been tweaked to promote Musk and his world view. A series of Grok queries recently led to results claiming that Musk is a better athlete than basketball superstar LeBron James and that he is smarter than the iconic Leonardo da Vinci.
Musk continues to be a major influencer and funder of the Republican Party in spite of his pro-Nazi efforts. Earlier this week he was an invited guest at the White House reception for the leader of Saudi Arabia. With Musk being the first person worth a whopping $500 billion who knows what damage he’ll do with all that money next.
