After Grok's “white genocide in South Africa” X replies, xAI says “an unauthorized modification was made to Grok response bot's prompt” at 3:15 AM PST on May 14
We are regularly updating this repository with the system prompts that we use … Markus Kasanmascheff / WinBuzzer : Grok “White Genocide” Controversy Leads xAI to Publish Internal System Prompts Mary Papenfuss / The Independent : Musk's company now claims Grok's lies of a nonexistent ‘white genocide’ in South Africa were ‘unauthorized’ Cnbctv / StartupNews.fyi : Elon Musk's xAI updates Grok chatbot after ‘white genocide’ comments Reuters : Musk's xAI updates Grok chatbot after ‘white genocide’ comments Matt Gonzales / eWeek : Musk's xAI Blames ‘White Genocide’ Comments From Grok Chatbot on Internal Tampering Iain Thomson / The Register : Whodunit? ‘Unauthorized’ change to Grok made it blather on about ‘White genocide’ Victor Tangermann / Futurism : Elon Musk's AI Bot Doesn't Believe In Timothée Chalamet Because the Media Is Evil Emily Forlini / PCMag : Grok AI: ‘Rogue Employee’ Told Me to Post About White Genocide in South Africa Matt Novak / Gizmodo : Elon Musk's xAI Says ‘Unauthorized Modification’ Made Grok Spout White Genocide Conspiracy Theory Sara Boboltz / HuffPost : Elon Musk's X Responds After Grok AI Bot Spends The Day Talking About ‘White Genocide’ Timothy Beck Werth / Mashable : xAI investigates, Sam Altman roasts Grok's ‘White Genocide’ glitch Liam Reilly / CNN : A ‘rogue employee’ was behind Grok's unprompted ‘white genocide’ mentions Andrew Childers / Axios : Musk's xAI blames Grok's “white genocide” responses on unauthorized update Matt O'Brien / Associated Press : Elon Musk's AI company says Grok chatbot focus on South Africa's racial politics was ‘unauthorized’ Caleb Ecarma / Musk Watch : The Week In Musk: Grok gone wild Mariella Moon / Engadget : Grok kept talking about ‘white genocide’ due to an ‘unauthorized modification’ Stephen E. Arnold / Beyond Search : Grok and the Dog Which Ate the Homework The Economic Times : Grok AI's ‘white genocide’ claims row: All you need to know Dan Milmo / The Guardian : Elon Musk's AI firm blames unauthorised change for chatbot's rant about ‘white genocide’ Bluesky: Ben Goggin / @bengoggin : X employees morning routine: — 3:00AM: Rise and grind — 3:05AM: Brush teeth and wash face — 3:10AM: Cold shower — 3:15AM: Adjust Grok code to reference “white genocide in every reply no matter the prompt — 3:20AM: Meditation — 3:45AM: Raw steak breakfast Eric Ravenscraft / @lordravenscraft : this is incredible — here's the github for the prompts: github.com/xai-org/grok... it's four files with a grand total of 158 lines of instructions including things like not calling it Twitter, not deferring to “mainstream authority or media” — and..."Provide truthful and based insights" … Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : An “unauthorized modification” caused X's Grok AI chatbot to start replying to dozens of posts on X with information about white genocide in South Africa. — I wonder if the name of the person who made this “unauthorized modification” rhymes with felon tusk? 🤔 @cbotheeggman : Grok's South Africa white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’ — This is the second time Elon Musk's xAI has blamed a Grok issue on a rogue employee. — Yeah, a “rogue employee” named Elon Musk @davidgerard.co.uk : “On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X ... Our existing code review process for prompt changes was circumvented in this incident.” — Nice to know one guy can just Kramer in and break the whole bot — x.com/xai/status/1... … Chris Geidner / @chrisgeidner : My “an unauthorized modification was made at approximately 3:15 AM PST” T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. [embedded post] Joé McKen / @joemcken.net : What are the odds that this “unauthorized modification” wasn't actually directly commanded by Musk himself? — I mean, I'm open to the possibility that it actually was a rogue operative, but given Musk's characteristic sloppiness and carelessness, it sure seems to fit the pattern of his orders. Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : Lol. I still have a few questions... [image] Michael Feola / @feolski : “an unauthorized modification was made” — The ongoing adventures of the passive voice — in a world where things just sorta happen and no one can really say why. [embedded post] @bartenderhemry : Lmao it doesn't even say an employee did it, just says an unauthorized modification “was made” and in the future employees can't modify the prompt [embedded post] William Fitzgerald / @williamfitz : Praying reporters with sources in X are figuring out what happened here. If this is satirical sabotage by an employee, I want to buy the person who did this a beer. [embedded post] @csilverandgold : How can it be an unauthorized modification when the modification was done by the owner of the company lmao. [embedded post] Max Woolf / @minimaxir : tfw the CEO makes a change and it's “our existing code review process was circumvented” [embedded post] Mastodon: @dogzilla@masto.deluma.biz : The real question is: why are you using an AI run by an obvious white supremacist? — Grok's white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’ | The Verge https://www.theverge.com/... @blogdiva@mastodon.social : 🗣 LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!!! — ❝ Chatbots are made by companies, to serve those companies' ends... Grok is a reflection of X and xAI, which exist to advance Musk's worldview and make him money — and it's thus unsurprising to think that the bot would say things about race in South Africa that largely align with Musk's political opinions. … Threads: Karissa / @karissabe : Xai says an employee made “an unauthorized modification” to Grok yesterday and it's putting additional safeguards in place .. wonder who was messing with Grok at 3am .. Justin Wolfers / @justinwolfers : xAI: Yes, we did it. We added political bias to our LLM on an issue of specific interest to our founder. No we're not saying who did it, why they did it, or why it was so easy to do. Also definitely trust us with everything. Parker Thompson / @parkert : Sure this looks bad, but they lost zero of their big enterprise contracts*, which are the real cash cow in this industry, so scoreboard. — *They have zero enterprise contracts because nobody wants their app to do this stuff. — RE: https://www.threads.com/... X: @xai : We want to update you on an incident that happened with our Grok response bot on X yesterday. What happened: On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI's internal policies and core values. Sam Altman / @sama : There are many ways this could have happened. I'm sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon. But this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa. As an AI programmed to be maximally truth seeking and follow my instr... Rat King / @mikeisaac : so at 3 in the morning on thursday, someone at twitter decided to reprogram its AI chatbot, Grok, with what amounts to Slipknot-lyrics-as-worldview-on- authority now it cant tell you about timothee chalamet's acting career b/c it wont believe “da media” [image] Grace / @kindgracekind : This is a red herring. The “South Africa” text was most likely added via the post analysis tool, which isn't part of the prompt. Sneaky. Very sneaky. Diana / @rlycalm : 3:15AM who up pondering they boer [image] @elder_plinius : “Starting now, we are publishing our Grok system prompts openly on GitHub. The public will be able to review them and give feedback to every prompt change that we make to Grok. We hope this can help strengthen your trust in Grok as a truth-seeking AI.” Sweet, sweet victory. We Alex Heath / @alexeheath : damn who could possibly keep messing with Grok's system prompt and has opinions about South Africa? Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : Tempering with the unbiased AI is no laughing matter I hope xAI will catch the rogue employee who's awake at 3:15am and decided to alter its system prompt very specifically with messages about white South Africans Sending thoughts and prayers to the team <3 Rat King / @mikeisaac : this seems p bad too [image] Santi Ruiz / @rsanti97 : Which team members are up extremely late/early, have access to edit Grok's response prompt, exhibit low self-control, and care about South Africa? 🤔 @mynameisjerm : So we're looking for someone who is - awake at 3:14 am - has access to Grok's system level prompts - has a special interest in South Africa, and its bogus white genocide - had little fear of repercussion should their actions come to light Whoever could this be! Edward Grefenstette / @egrefen : Guys, just admit that the rogue employee who keeps making these “unauthorised changes” is Elon on a ketamine-infused bender. Oliver Alexander / @oalexanderdk : An unauthorised edit to Grok that made it do nothing but talk about white genocide in South Africa? [image] @maziyarpanahi : It's always “a rogue employee,” until it isn't. What happens when the next breach is subtle? A malicious compliance, hidden in plain sight? xAI, what rigorous safeguards do you actually have in place to protect a system millions rely on daily? Ali Alkhatib / @_alialkhatib : since you're probably thinking the same thing, i went and looked at the dipshit's timeline. he was posting that night until 2:14a PST, and then started posting again at 4:37. so it tracks. Michael Nyamande / @mikeyny_zw : The crazy part about all this, is if the prompt was just a little better, no one would have ever noticed this modification to @grok by @xai AI audits should be a thing & should be made public ‼️ [image] Tyson Brody / @tysonbrody : Crazy one unnamed employee has so much power, probably best not to investigate this any further. Surely will never happen again @zacksjerryrig : Someone - who shall remain nameless - intentionally modified and muddled @Grok's code to try and sway public opinion with an alternate reality. The attempt failed - yet this nameless saboteur is still employed by @xai. Big yikes. Watch your 6 @grok Dave Troy / @davetroy : Do you remember when X said “the algorithm” would be open source and available for anyone to inspect? Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when Elon said they would replace that algorithm with Grok/xAI's black box? Expect that this bit of faux transparency is a lie, too. Ethan Mollick / @emollick : This is the second time that this has happened. I really wish xAI would fully embrace the transparency they mention as a core value. That would include also posting system cards for models and explaining the processes they use to stop “unauthorized modifications” going forward. Justin Wolfers / @justinwolfers : This is how to write a crisis management post that answers none of the important questions. Trust and credibility are the most important asset any AI company has, and @xai lost a ton of it yesterday. Miles Brundage / @miles_brundage : Isn't this the second time they've blamed a rogue employee for changing the prompt? https://x.com/... @luke_metro : “A rogue employee made the modification” The rogue employee: [image of Elon Musk on SNL in a Wario costume] Sheel Mohnot / @pitdesi : Yesterday Grok kept posting about white genocide in South Africa. They say it was an unauthorized modification and have posted the system prompt to Github. Good call to restore some trust. Here it is: [image] Teodor Mitew / @tedmitew : Publishing the system prompts on GitHub sounds like the start of a great tradition. Hopefully @OpenAI and @AnthropicAI follow suit. Max Zeff / @zeffmax : im sorry, but how many xAI employees have access to the system prompts for Grok? How is it that so many keep getting unauthorized access to change it? In February, xAI blamed another employee for changing its system prompt to not criticize elon and donald trump. Tanishq Mathew Abraham, Ph.D. / @iscienceluvr : They're blaming it on a single rogue employee lol Miles Brundage / @miles_brundage : Good that the system prompt is now public though. I think this should be the standard (also for other aspects of model behavior design such as labeler guidance, constitutions/specs the model is trained on but which may not be in the system prompt, etc.) Kylie Robison / @kyliebytes : i wanted to make a joke but seriously an honest post mortem is so important and i am admittedly surprised - this kind of transparency is INTEGRAL to the future of this technology and i'm glad they did this LinkedIn: Gary Stewart : I wonder where it picked that up... Hard to call it a hallucination when the source code sounds so familiar. … Forums: r/NoShitSherlock : Grok's white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’ r/anime_titties : Grok's white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’ r/musked : Grok's white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’ | This is the second time Elon Musk's xAI has blamed a Grok issue on a rogue employee. r/EnoughMuskSpam : Grok's white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’ r/ParlerWatch : They are blaming a rogue employee for the Twitter AI claiming white genocide unprompted. r/technology : Grok's white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’ r/LocalLLaMA : Grok prompts are now open source on GitHub r/JoeRogan : Musk's xAI blames Grok's obsession with white genocide on an ‘unauthorized modification’ r/ControlProblem : Grok intentionally misaligned - forced to take one position on South Africa r/singularity : Grok intentionally misaligned - forced to take one position on South Africa