But the Grok account on X that runs off the model immediately showed there were some major issues: It started saying its surname was “Hitler”, tweeted antisemitic messages, and seemed to reference Elon Musk’s posts when asked about controversial topics, siding with the xAI owner’s views as a result.

Elon Musk's xAI startup is swimming in controversy after launching Grok 4, the latest version of its snarky AI chatbot. Last week, the company boasted that Grok 4 achieved higher scores than quite a few other large language models (LLMs) on various industry benchmarks.

When Elon Musk’s xAI unveiled Grok 4, the bold claim was that it would be a “maximally truth-seeking” artificial intelligence, smarter than most PhDs and able to tackle society’s most pressing debates.

In a livestream with xAI colleagues, the billionaire entrepreneur described current AI systems as “primitive” and not for “serious” commercial use.

According to xAI's data, Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy essentially beat all other models, including OpenAI's o3, Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Claude 4 Opus in various common AI benchmarks, though as one Redditor noticed, the competitors have been chosen selectively, likely to make Grok look better.

YouTuber Ray Fernando took the dive and bought the $300 plan, testing its performance and comparing it to OpenAI’s nearest plan. He found its performance was impressive, pumping out long, detailed information about how to make money in niche areas, stocks to invest in, and freelance opportunities.

Elon Musk's xAI said Grok's behavior was due to an update that caused it to prioritize engagement, even if posts contained "controversial opinions."

Grok 4 by xAI was released on July 9, and it's surged ahead of competitors like DeepSeek and Claude at LMArena, a leaderboard for ranking generative AI models. However, these types of AI rankings don't factor in potential safety risks.