XAI Was About to Land a Major Government Contract. Then Grok Praised Hitler

Decided to play around with Grok some weeks ago. To be honest, didn't see any appeal to move away from ChatGPT & Gemini in favour of Grok.

My suspicion is that Grok won't be a long-term player in the AI market.

EDIT: Gut feeling, no strong reasoning behind it, might very well be wrong.

Before the incident:

> GSA leadership continued to push for the agency to roll out Grok for internal use. “We kept saying ‘Are you sure?’ And they were like ‘No we gotta have Grok,’” one employee involved with the discussions tells WIRED.

Then:

> “The week after Grok went MechaHitler, [GSA leadership] was like ‘Where are we on Grok?’” the same employee claims. “We were like, ‘Do you not read a newspaper?’”

The political appointees were intent on getting Elon's product on contract even after it went full Kanye.

This is one of the many reasons it sucks that the Supreme Court is intent on letting us return to the spoils system.

And that sealed the final deal.

You can get all of the main llms to do that. It must be a matter of post generation censorship.

> In early June, GSA leadership met with the xAI team for a two-hour brainstorming session...The session appeared to go well. After it ended, GSA leadership continued to push for the agency to roll out Grok for internal use. “We kept saying ‘Are you sure?’ And they were like ‘No we gotta have Grok,’” one employee involved with the discussions tells WIRED.

Early June was at the very beginning of the Musk-Trump feud.

> Then, in early July, Grok appeared to go off the rails, spewing antisemitic hate, praising Adolf Hitler, and parroting racist conspiracy theories on X. Some GSA staffers were surprised that the incident did not appear to slow down the procurement process. “The week after Grok went MechaHitler, [GSA leadership] was like ‘Where are we on Grok?’” the same employee claims. “We were like, ‘Do you not read a newspaper?’”

> Then GSA leadership appeared to abruptly change course. Shortly before GSA was set to announce its partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google’s Gemini, and xAI last week, staff were instructed to remove xAI’s Grok from the contract offering, two sources with knowledge tell WIRED. Two GSA workers involved with the contract believe xAI was pulled because of Grok’s antisemitic tirade last month.

IIRC, July was when it seemed to hit the point of no return. I believe reprisals against Musk's businesses were threatened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Musk_feud

This is important context, and I'm disappointed in Wired for not mentioning it.