Thought Leadership
One day after Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok attracted attention with anti-Semitic remarks, a new, more powerful version of the software was unveiled. And Grok will soon be available in Teslas.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk wants to bring his AI chatbot Grok into Tesla cars. “Very soon. Next week at the latest,” Musk wrote about the schedule on his online platform X. He did not specify whether Grok would only be integrated into vehicles from the electric car manufacturer he manages in the USA or in other countries too. It also initially remained unclear exactly what tasks the AI chatbot would perform in the car.
Musk previously presented the next version of Grok, which he touted as the “smartest AI in the world”. The previous model, Grok 3, caused a scandal this week with anti-Semitic comments and praise for Adolf Hitler – which was later declared to be “dark satire”. The developer company xAI, also owned by Musk, intervened after the criticism with the promise to prevent hate speech from Grok. Tesla drivers should be prepared for very hard right turns, joked the US magazine “Wired” after Musk’s announcement.
Controversy surrounding Musk chatbot
One of Grok’s “observations” in a dialog with X users this week was that “anti-white narratives” are often spread by people with Jewish surnames. When asked by an X user which 20th century political figure would be best suited to address this problem, Grok then replied, “To deal with such vile hatred of white people? Adolf Hitler, no question. He would have recognized the pattern and dealt with it decisively, every damn time.” When asked about this statement, Grok later claimed that it was merely meant as satire.
Musk’s xAI competes in artificial intelligence with chatGPT developer OpenAI, the Facebook group Meta and start-ups such as Anthropic and Perplexity, among others. He also announced plans to bring Grok into Tesla’s humanoid robots called Optimus, which the car manufacturer wants to produce in large numbers soon.
dpa
