It isn't immediately clear what led to the disturbing posts, whether due to a fault in the chatbot's programming or if Grok was just following orders.

Grok also called itself "MechaHitler" in a series of replies to users. Elon Musk has spoken out after Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot embedded in his social media site X, described itself as "MechaHitler".

On Sunday, the chatbot was updated to "not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated." By Tuesday, it was praising Hitler.