Elon Musk unveils Grok4 AI after backlash over 'antisemitic' content

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is rolling out Grok 4 just months after releasing its previous iteration, underscoring the frenetic pace of AI development. 

Flanked by members of the xAI team and clad in a leather jacket, the billionaire demoed the new bot via a video livestream late Wednesday night. Available immediately, Grok 4 is “smarter than almost all graduate students, in all disciplines, simultaneously,” according to Musk. It includes improved voice conversations and the company touted benchmarks showing the new AI system scoring higher than OpenAI and others. 

“At times it may lack common sense, and it has not yet invented new technologies or discovered new physics, but that is just a matter of time,” Musk said about the new chatbot.   

Grok 4’s release comes just a day after xAI was forced to remove inappropriate Grok posts from X that included antisemitic comments and replies to users. “Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the company wrote. 

“We need to make sure that the AI is a good AI,” Musk said on Wednesday, without acknowledging the offending Grok 3 posts or controversy. 

Earlier that day, a Turkish government minister also blasted Grok for sharing inappropriate posts, threatening to ban X in the country “if necessary” unless steps are taken to prevent such content. “It is unacceptable to use tailored profanity,” Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu told Bloomberg News. 

The Grok 4 unveiling comes at a time of transition for xAI, which merged with X back in March. The new joint company has combined some engineering resources and other technology in an effort to better develop Grok and distribute it to X’s user base. X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino announced her resignation earlier Wednesday just hours before the Grok 4 livestream, creating a leadership hole atop the social network. 

Musk is also raising significant financing for xAI, which is competing with other major tech giants like Alphabet Inc.’s Google, OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc. to develop state-of-the-art chatbots. The company is burning through $1 billion per month, Bloomberg News previously reported, in a sign of how costly the company’s AI ambitions have become.