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Today, Explained

White genocide Grok

Today, Explained

Vox

Daily News, Politics, News

4.49.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When the Twitter/X chatbot, Grok, started glitching with responses about white genocide to unrelated questions, it pulled back the curtain on the people behind the AI machine. This episode was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team. It was produced by Miles Bryan and Denise Guerra, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Laura Bullard, and engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd. Disclosures: Vox Media has a partnership with OpenAI. Future Perfect is funded in part by the BEMC Foundation, whose major funder was also an early investor in Anthropic. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Photo by VINCENT FEURAY/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Ahead on Today Explained.

0:02.5

Twitter has a, what is effectively, a built-in AI with the name GROC, which is run by a company

0:09.8

also owned by Elon Musk called XAI.

0:12.2

And the main function of GROC is that if you see a tweet in the world that you don't

0:17.3

understand, you don't get the joke, you're not sure that the claim being made in the tweet

0:20.8

is true. You can tag GROC in, say, at Grok, is this true? At Grok, what's the joke?

0:25.4

At Grok, show me some context. And Grok will. It will get it right sometimes and it'll get it wrong

0:31.8

sometimes and it'll get it kind of right sometimes. Again, in the way that a lot of us are familiar with chat, GPT.

0:43.8

Last week, starting on Wednesday, every time you asked GROC a question, regardless of what the question was about, GROC would bring up white genocide and the South African anti-apartheid

0:49.7

song, Kill the Boar, for reasons that were totally unclear based on any of those responses.

1:00.6

Hey, it's Scott Galloway. In today's marketing landscape, if you're not evolving, you're getting

1:04.8

left behind. In some ways, it's easier than ever to reach your customers, but cutting through

1:08.8

the noise has never been harder.

1:14.5

So we're going to talk about it on a special Prop G Office Hour series.

1:18.1

We'll be answering questions from C-suite execs and business leaders about how to market efficiently and effectively in today's chaotic world.

1:21.0

So tune into Propgey Office Hour special series brought to you by Adobe Express.

1:25.5

You can find it on the Prop.G feed wherever you get your

1:28.1

podcasts.

1:33.3

In every company, there's a whole system of decision makers, challenges, and strategies,

1:38.4

shaping the future of business at every level. That's why we're running a special

1:41.9

three-part Decoder Thursday series, looking at how some of

1:44.9

the biggest companies in the world are adapting, innovating, and rethinking their playbooks. We're asking

...

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