Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, says an “unauthorized modification” led its Grok chatbot to post unsolicited claims on social media about the persecution and “genocide” of white people in South Africa.

Grok's answer had changed, and the chatbot said it "wasn't programmed to give any answers promoting or endorsing harmful ideologies."

In a post on X on Thursday, xAI said it would update the system to address the problem. XAI said that early on Wednesday the unauthorized change was made to Grok's response software, circumventing the normal review process.