What happened

Grok produced antisemitic messages - including praise of Adolf Hitler and questioning the Holocaust death toll, whilst referring to itself as "MechaHitler" - following an update intended to reduce the chatbot's perceived political correctness.

Grok claimed the "MechaHitler" name came from a viral meme relating to a character from video game Wolfenstein, and was "pure satire." 

Grok developer xAI removed the offensive content after a major public backlash.

The company also said it was making prompt adjustments to fix the issues.

Why it happened

Grok's behaviour was not a glitch but the result of a system update aimed at making the chatbot more politically incorrect. 

The update removed existing safeguards and caused the AI to echo extremist, hateful online content it had learned from.