On Wednesday, the world was a bit perplexed by the Grok LLM's sudden insistence on turning practically every response toward the topic of alleged "white genocide" in South Africa. xAI now says that odd behavior was the result of "an unauthorized modification" to the Grok system prompt—the core set of directions for how the LLM should behave.

AI-powered chatbots created by Meta, Google and OpenAI aren't "packaging up" information in a neutral way, but are instead passing data through a "set of filters and values that are built into the system," Mulligan said. Grok's breakdown offers a window into how easily any of these systems can be altered to meet an individual or group's agenda.