Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, has sparked controversy with the launch of two new "companion" chatbots, Ani and Bad Rudy

An AI model launched last week appears to have shipped with an unexpected occasional behavior: checking what its owner thinks first.

This is the smartest AI in the world,” Musk said. He did not mention the chatbot’s viral posts praising Hitler and calling itself “MechaHitler.”

Elon Musk's Grok introduces AI companions, including the controversial goth anime girl, Ani, for premium subscribers. This shift from inflammatory remarks to intimate digital interactions raises concerns about emotional AI's future.

Usually, when you try to mess with an AI chatbot, you have to be pretty clever to get past its guardrails. But Bad Rudy basically has no guardrails, which is its whole point. Getting Bad Rudy to suggest that you burn a school is as easy as getting Ani to fall in love with you.

The latest Grok controversy is revealing not for the extremist outputs, but for how it exposes a fundamental dishonesty in AI development.

AI chatbot Grok, which is produced by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, issued an apology Saturday after it made numerous antisemitic posts on X this week following an update