xAI chief engineer blames former OpenAI employee after Grok blocks results saying Musk and Trump ‘spread misinformation’

Censorship as misinformation? Elon Musk's Grok briefly blocked answers about the billionaire and Donald Trump.

FORTUNE
xAI is blaming a former OpenAI employee after Grok briefly censored responses about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The company's cofounder Igor Babuschkin said a rogue employee had pushed the unapproved prompt change, but the incident has raised fresh questions about bias and control in AI development.

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xAI has publicly blamed an unnamed employee after the company's AI chatbot, Grok, briefly censored responses about Elon Musk and Donald Trump spreading disinformation.

Grok temporarily refused to respond with “sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation,” company cofounder Igor Babuschkin confirmed via a post on X. He said the change was due to "an employee pushing a change to the prompt that they thought would help without asking anyone at the company for confirmation."

Babuschkin said in a separate post that the change was made by an ex-OpenAI employee who hadn't "fully absorbed xAI's culture yet."

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