Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company said an unauthorised modification to its chatbot Grok was the reason why it kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of white genocide on social media this week.

Elon Musk's xAI responded to widespread reports that its Grok chatbot made claims about a genocide against white citizens in South Africa, saying there had been an unauthorized change to the artificial intelligence bot.

AI blamed an 'unauthorized modification' for a bug in its AI-powered Grok chatbot that caused Grok to repeatedly refer to "white genocide in South Africa" when invoked in certain contexts on X.