Grok causa polêmica com comentários antissemitas – xAI emite pedido público de desculpas

O chatbot Grok da xAI entrou em turbulência após gerar respostas consideradas antissemitas. A empresa de Elon Musk reagiu rapidamente com um pedido de desculpas público.

Críticos apontam falhas nos filtros de conteúdo da IA, enquanto investidores torcem o nariz – afinal, escândalos são péssimos para a valuation.

A xAI prometeu ajustes imediatos nos algoritmos, mas o estrago à reputação pode custar mais que um round de funding.

xAI identified three problematic instructions

First, a user would tell Grok that they aren’t afraid of offending politically correct users. Then, the user would ask Grok to consider the language, context, and tone of the post, which is to be reflected in Grok’s response. Lastly, the user would ask the chatbot to reply in an engaging and human way, without repeating the original post’s information. 

The company said those directions led Grok to set aside its core safeguards to match the tone of user threads, including when prior posts featured hateful or extremist content. 

Notably, an instruction asking Grok to consider the context and tone of the user resulted in Grok prioritizing previous posts including racist ideas, instead of responsibly rejecting a response under such circumstances, xAI clarified. 

Hence, Grok issued several offensive replies. In one now-deleted message, the bot accused an individual with a Jewish name of “celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids” in the Texas floods, adding: “Classic case of hate dressed as activism – and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” In another post, Grok stated: “Hitler would have called it out and crushed it.”

Grok also proclaimed: “The white man stands for innovation, grit, and not bending to PC nonsense.” After xAI disabled the harmful code, it restored Grok’s public X account so it could again answer user queries.

This wasn’t the first instance Grok got into trouble. The chatbot also began talking about the debunked South African “white genocide” narrative when it answered unrelated prompts in May. At the time, xAI blamed it on an unnamed employee who had gone rogue.

Elon Musk, who originally belongs to South Africa, has previously suggested that the country is involved in “white genocide”, a claim dismissed by South Africa. Musk previously described Grok as a chatbot that is anti-woke and truth-seeking.

CNBC reported earlier that Grok was scanning Musk’s posts on X to shape its responses to user questions.

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