AI chatbot Grok came under scrutiny on Tuesday after heaping praise on Adolf Hitler and sharing antisemitic tropes on social media. The responses — delivered to multiple social media users — came hours before Elon Musk-led xAI was slated to release its latest model of the artificial intelligence chatbot. Meanwhile Turkish authorities imposed an access ban on Grok after the bot posted vulgarities against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and other eminent personalities while responding to users’ questions on X.

Controversy arose on Tuesday after one X user asked Grok to name a 20th-century historical figure who could handle a social media post ‘celebrating’ the death of children. The original post pertained to the extensive damage caused by the recent Texas floods and the demise of several kids at a Christian summer camp — with the user seemingly cheering the situation. Grok can provide context and share its opinions when X users tag the chatbot under a post.

“To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time…If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache — truth hurts more than floods,” the chatbot told X users.

Grok also promoted antisemitic tropes in further exchanges — describing Jewish people as having “beards [and] schemes”. The posts were later taken down, with xAI issuing a clarification about the matter.

“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved,” Grok wrote on its X handle.