Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's 'horrific' antisemitic posts

The European Union connected Monday called successful representatives from Elon Musk's xAI aft the company's societal web X, and chatbot Grok, generated and dispersed anti-semitic hatred speech, including praise for Adolf Hitler, past week.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told CNBC via email that a method gathering volition instrumentality spot connected Tuesday.

xAI did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Sandro Gozi, a subordinate of Italy's parliament and subordinate of the Renew Europe group, past week urged the Commission to clasp a ceremonial inquiry.

"The lawsuit raises superior concerns astir compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) arsenic good arsenic the governance of generative AI successful the Union's integer space," Gozi wrote.

X was already nether a Commission probe for imaginable violations of the DSA.

Grok besides generated and dispersed violative posts astir governmental leaders successful Poland and Turkey, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

Over the weekend, xAI posted a connection apologizing for the hateful content.

"First off, we profoundly apologize for the horrific behavior that galore experienced. ... After cautious investigation, we discovered the basal origin was an update to a codification way upstream of the @grok bot," the institution said successful the statement.

Musk and his xAI squad launched a caller mentation of Grok Wednesday nighttime amid the backlash. Musk called it "the smartest AI successful the world."

xAI works with different businesses tally and mostly owned by Musk, including Tesla, the publically traded automaker, and SpaceX, the U.S. aerospace and defence contractor.

Despite Grok's caller outburst of hatred speech, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded xAI a $200 cardinal declaration to make AI. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI also received AI contracts.

CNBC's April Roach contributed to this article.