Grok reveals need for African Al

Most artificial intelligence bots are trained outside the continent, raising questions of bias

- Nkateko Joseph Mabasa

The creators of artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s XAI, admitted to it being instructed to spew right-wing disinformation about South Africa on social media platform X, raising concerns about digital vulnerabilities.

On 14 May, Grok caused a stir on X when it would respond to unrelated questions from numerous users with misinformation on “white genocide” in South Africa, a claim made by United States President Donald Trump, an ally of Musk, to support his offer of refuge to Afrikaners.

Many users posted screenshots of the chatbot’s responses. Grok further designated farm murders as “racially motivated” instead of previous responses where it linked the killings to South Africa’s high crime levels.

In a statement about a day later, XAI said an “unauthorised modification” by an employee had caused Grok to accept “white genocide” in South Africa as a fact.

It said from now on, Grok’s system prompts will be published on proprietary developer platform GitHub for public review and to promote transparency.

Although AI-powered tools used in agriculture, health, banking, fintech and research have had a positive effect on economies, the Grok incident raises questions about how algorithms are trained.