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.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence tool Grok went haywire for users of the social media platform X on Wednesday, responding to innocuous queries about things like baseball and puppies with information on South Africa and a conspiracy theory called “white genocide.” It was widespread and extremely weird to witness.

Grok's developer has said an "unauthorized modification" took place after users reported the chatbot founded by Elon Musk was serving up mentions of "white genocide" in South Africa without prompting, when asked about unrelated topics. xAI, which developed the bot for integration on X, has launched an inquiry.