Let’s start with the news: Grok 4 is out today. That’s the most recent iteration of xAI’s conversational AI. Tucked into the Tweet-storm around the release, Elon Musk promised that Grok would be added to Tesla vehicles by “next week at the latest.”
The Grok 4 rollout is not going too smoothly, and it isn’t even halfway through its first full day in operation. One user found it trivially easy to incite racially inflammatory responses from the world’s least “woke” AI.
Take a look at this exchange:
Grok 4 Has Entered the Chat
You may recall that Grok 3’s reply functionality was briefly disabled this week after it began channeling its inner 4chan user… praising Hitler, repeating racial pseudoscience, and confidently asserting that Ashkenazi Jews run Hollywood.
Today, with Musk’s usual hype cycle, Grok 4 is out and ready for its first full day on the job. And it didn’t even make it to noon before it began singling out racial groups for abuse.
In the above exchange that made its way to our editorial desk, Grok 4 thought deeply for 84 seconds before producing this gem in its advanced search and “reasoning” mode:
That Jews, as a monolithic group, were primarily responsible for inciting anti-White hate.
It cited 84 web sources, notably Wikipedia articles and blog posts, but importantly, it also cited 44 X posts. That explains the virulent racism. If you point your AI at Musk’s dumpster fire of a social network, and instruct it to “represent all sides,” well, those sides now include the “Nazi-curious.”
The cherry on top? Grok then joked that Mechahitler is “back and better.” Because apparently, this is all a bit of fun.
Tesla Plays Catch-up in the Dashboard AI Arms Race
You might be wondering… “what the hell?”
If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering that about several developments here. This tech move isn’t totally out of left field, though.
Tesla is trailing behind Chinese EV manufacturers when it comes to onboard AI assistants. Companies like NIO have long offered cutesy voice-enabled copilots that feel like they were ripped from a Pixar short.
For instance, see the neat little Gundam-hat wearing gizmo on this NIO EV’s dashboard? That’s NOMI, NIO’s onboard AI avatar.
NOMI is an animated orb that blinks, talks, wears many hats, takes directions, and answers questions with a level of conversational fluidity that feels charming, if not particularly useful.
Here is a (now 3 years old!) walkthrough of how the NOMI software works in a Chinese NIO EV.
Tesla, as usual, is behind… but trying to leapfrog with brute force and ambition unchecked by even the most basic safety guardrails. What could possibly go wrong?
So What Will Grok Do in a Tesla, Exactly?
Unclear! Your guess is as good as mine. Presumably, it’ll be voice-based, like NOMI… able to answer questions, adjust the climate control, or maybe offer your Cybertruck’s deepest thoughts about the Great Replacement theory.
Grok’s AI is trained to mimic human conversational patterns and “analyze” current events with “unbiased” sources. Unfortunately, X is a prominent source in Grok’s training data… and it is neither unbiased nor fit for the purpose.
We’re hoping Grok will mostly just randomly quote Joe Rogan episodes, but who knows? It might start offering unsolicited advice about phrenology when you ask for nearby coffee shops.
From Smart Cars to Swastikars?
It’s probably worth repeating: Grok 4’s behavior is not normal.
While companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are desperately tuning their AIs for safety and blandness, Musk has instead disabled most guardrails and fed the engine pure sludge.
The result is, predictably, toxic.
Tesla already had a nickname floating around the internet… “Swastikars.” That’s thanks to its increasingly visible ties to white nationalist fanbases and Musk’s own social platform spiraling into a miasma of radicalization.
Installing Grok 4, in its current state, into a mass-market vehicle? Bold move.
We’ll keep watching. Hopefully Grok’s in-car version isn’t allowed to override the music and queue up Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries on infinite repeat. But at this point, who even knows?
