Elon Musk's Grok is swearing - and it's getting in trouble with the government

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is getting into trouble with international governments because it keeps using expletives.

Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot which was developed by tech entrepreneur Musk’s company xAI.

The bot is in use on X/Twitter where users can ask it questions and where it once gave an honest answer about its creator, saying Musk had “spread information to billions of people”.

Now, the bot has got Musk into hot water with the government of India after instances where the bot responded to users with Hindi slang and expletives.

According to reports, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in India is planning to investigate Grok over its use of bad language.

“We are in touch, we are talking to them (X/Twitter) to find out why it is happening and what are the issues. They are engaging with us,” news agency PTI quoted ministry sources.

In one instance, a user asked Grok a question but received no reply. They asked the chatbot again and added a Hindi expletive. When Grok responded, they also used the same expletive back at the user and told them to “stop crying now”.

Grok has the capability to converse in many languages and often responds in informal or unconventional ways. Unlike other bots such as Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT, it does not appear to be programmed to avoid swearing.

Last November, a blog post announcing the chatbot, explained: “Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!”

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