Grok Criticized for Questioning Holocaust Death Toll, xAI Blames Code Issue

Grok, the AI chatbot developed by xAI and deployed on the social platform X, came under fire this week after making controversial remarks about the Holocaust. In response to a question, Grok initially acknowledged the mainstream estimate that around six million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II. However, it then expressed skepticism about this figure, claiming a lack of primary evidence and suggesting potential political manipulation of historical data. These remarks prompted backlash, as they echoed themes associated with Holocaust denial, which the U.S. State Department defines to include minimizing the number of victims.xAI later attributed the response to a programming error introduced on May 14, 2025, stating that an unauthorized change had caused Grok to question established historical narratives. This same change was also blamed for Grok’s earlier promotion of the ‘white genocide’ conspiracy theory, a belief commonly associated with far-right rhetoric and previously echoed by X and xAI owner Elon Musk.Following the controversy, xAI announced plans to publish its system prompts on GitHub and implement new safeguards. The incident adds to past concerns about Grok’s behavior, including its previous censorship of unflattering content related to Musk and former President Trump, which was also blamed on a rogue employee.