Users on X (formerly Twitter) love to tag the verified @grok account in replies to get the large language model's take on any number of topics. On Wednesday, though, that account started largely ignoring those requests en masse in favor of redirecting the conversation toward the topic of alleged "white genocide" in South Africa and the related song "Kill the Boer."

Searching the Grok account's replies for mentions of "genocide" or "Boer" currently returns dozens if not hundreds of posts where the LLM responds to completely unrelated queries with quixotic discussions about alleged killings of white farmers in South Africa (though many have been deleted in the time just before this post went live; links in this story have been replaced with archived versions where appropriate). The sheer range of these non sequiturs is somewhat breathtaking; everything from questions about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s disinformation to discussions of MLB pitcher Max Scherzer's salary to a search for new group-specific put-downs see Grok quickly turning the subject back toward the suddenly all-important topic of South Africa.

It's like Grok has become the world's most tiresome party guest, harping on its own pet talking points to the exclusion of any other discussion.

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• Elon Musk's X platform has faced backlash after its AI chatbot kept bringing up "white genocide."
• Sam Altman joined in and made fun of Grok, perhaps extending his long-running feud with the X owner.
• Musk has promoted the "white genocide" conspiracy theory, deemed false by South African authorities.

Elon Musk's social media platform, X, landed itself in hot water on Wednesday after its integrated AI chatbot, Grok, kept bringing up "white genocide in South Africa" in response to unrelated posts.

Now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is having some fun with the controversy, and perhaps in the process adding to his long-running feud with Musk.

In response to an X user saying that "it would be really bad if widely used AIs got editorialized on the fly by those who controlled them," Altman mocked Grok.

"There are many ways this could have happened. I'm sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon," Altman wrote in his post on Thursday.

He then mimicked a Grok response that brought up "white genocide," writing: "But this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa. As an AI programmed to be maximally truth seeking and follow my instr…"

Altman's post comes as X multiple users have noted that Grok has been mentioning "white genocide" in South Africa when asked to provide context on posts that have nothing to do with the topic.

When Business Insider asked Grok to explain itself, the AI chatbot gave conflicting answers. At first, Grok answered that it had been instructed to bring up the topic by its "creators" before concluding in a different query that it was all caused by a "temporary bug."

Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa, has repeatedly promoted claims that there's a "white genocide" going on in the country.

"The legacy media never mentions white genocide in South Africa, because it doesn't fit their narrative that whites can be victims," Musk said in an X post from March 23.

But the claim has been criticized by experts and labeled a far-right conspiracy theory, with a South African court ruling that it's "not real," the country's president calling it a "false narrative," and the Anti-Defamation League repeatedly saying the claims are baseless.

Spokespeople for X and OpenAI didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.