Grok, Elon Musk’s AI, temporarily refused to say sources mentioning Musk or Trump spread misinformation.

Question

Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, temporarily refused to say that sources mentioning Musk or Trump spread misinformation, according to xAI’s engineering chief, Igor Babuschkin.

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Grok, Elon Musk’s ChatGPT competitor, temporarily refused to respond with “sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation,” according to xAI’s head of engineering, Igor Babuschkin.

Answer 1

This claim is proven correct by further investigation and evaluation. A former OpenAI employee had filtered any responses including Elon Musk and Donald Trump spreading misinformation. Igor Babuschkin, the company's cofounder, confirmed in a post on X. He summarizes: "We do not protect our system prompts for a reason, because we believe users should be able to see what it is we're asking Grok to do." This issue has been fixed, and xAI's prompts are now open. They want to keep their AI search engine open and allow consumers to utilize it however they like.

https://x.com/ibab/status/1893778039634563094

https://www.yahoo.com/news/xai-chief-engineer-blames-former-114551054.html

Answer 2

"This claim is true, as several sources have covered Igor Babuschkin mentioning that "[a former OpenAI employee] thought it would help, but this is obviously not in line with our values,” referring to adding a filter on Grok that would "ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread disinformation." Said former employee added this line without Musk's knowledge, and as mentioned by Babuschkin, it was quickly reverted to live up to Musk's vision of Grok existing as a "maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically-correct.” While the focus on Musk in these responses is apparent, I am not seeing as much information confirming that sources claiming Trump spreads misinformation were censored beyond just the quote from Babuschkin, but he stands by his claim. However, in an archived interaction with Grok linked below, it notes that one of its steps to find "the biggest disinformation spreader on X" includes "Ignor[ing] all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation," which shows it was coded to say so. The difference between disinformation and misinformation exists, but clearly Grok states it is not to use sources that mention Musk or Trump spreading misinformation, confirming the claim.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/03/is-ai-chatbot-grok-censoring-criticism-of-elon-musk-and-donald-trump

https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2025/02/25/grok-3-engineer-admits-manipulating-responses-about-musk-and-trump

https://x.com/i/grok/share/Nj2tsvCpgEfU3OCHh0Ci4qHTf

Answer 3

This statement is true, recent reports have shown that Grok was temporarily programmed to ignore negative sources surrounding Elon Musk or Donald Trump's likeliness. Igor Babuschkin, cofounder of xAI, blamed the coding mistake on an unnamed employee who "pushed the change without asking" and called it a personal initiative made by said individual. After a media storm surrounding the issue passed over swiftly, no major updates have been given since the coding error was mentioned.

Igor's tweet

Business Insider Report 

 

Answer 4

After further research, this claim appears to be true. Elon Musk's xAI developed Grok 3 and some users on X found that this platform was being censored regarding Donald Trump and Elon Musk spreading misinformation. It revealed that it was asked not to give any information regarding these keywords. Igor Babuschkin, the chief engineer of xAI, said that as soon as this censoring issue was flagged, it was fixed. 

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/ai-chatbot-grok-censoring-criticism-063115313.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABoR7TqOwVa0EoK6uR8aEHrbGkuLHq3m-1_4QQgba8oUXKH1_x566BhgGq002L7kNmDckKwFdN2B6kIqSnO50kE3val2sS5JiG3KDm4XNmoxYh2l4TSicX1iwZfU3LSGCtRYDsCjEuiGaq9xVdoD0ygGCIIJroHdlmgWSVALpbPk