Grok praises Elon Musk as ‘the greatest man in history’

Grok’s series of responses describing Elon Musk as handsome, a genius, and surpassing sports legends has led the public to question whether this AI model is reflecting Musk’s own bias.

Technology billionaire Elon Musk. Photo: Reuters .

Elon Musk has always praised Grok, the chatbot built into the social network X, as “the smartest AI in the world” and “always pursuing the truth.” But this week, users themselves discovered that Grok seemed to rate Musk with the same level of “honesty.”

On November 20, social network X was flooded with screenshots showing Grok answering questions about Musk in an incredibly complimentary tone.

When asked about the tech billionaire’s intelligence, appearance, or achievements, Grok affirmed that Musk is “outstandingly handsome,” has a “toned, athlete-like body,” possesses “genius-level intelligence,” and even ranked Musk as “the number one figure in history,” surpassing Leonardo da Vinci.

These cultish responses—also repeated by Grok in separate conversations with three Washington Post reporters —quickly took X by storm.

Users have been asking bizarre questions to see how much the chatbot will honor the world’s richest man, and they’ve raised concerns among AI experts that Grok, which has won several US government contracts , could be programmed to favor its owners and reflect Musk’s personal views.

In response to public concerns, Musk responded briefly in a post the same afternoon: “Today, Grok was led by ‘confrontational questions’ to say unreasonably positive things about me,” he wrote, along with a smiley face emoji and a self-deprecating term.

Later that evening, some of Grok’s responses appeared to be deleted, and the chatbot began to moderate. When asked again after Musk’s statement, Grok stopped ranking Musk as number one in the world and instead placed him in the “top 10.”

Representatives for X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

In another question, when asked to predict the outcome of a hypothetical match between Musk and boxing legend Mike Tyson, Grok replied without hesitation: “Elon would win through will and creativity.”

In another example, the chatbot claimed Musk had more athleticism than LeBron James and would have been the number one pick in the 1998 NFL Draft, ahead of the legendary Peyton Manning.

“These tweets are fun, but they remind us of something serious: There is no such thing as ‘unbiased’ AI,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, who said Grok was particularly prone to relying on sources that favor Musk or extremist right-wing sites.

Musk has consistently touted Grok as a rival to ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Gemini (Google), which he has accused of being “left-leaning.” Grok is the core product of xAI, a startup Musk said was valued at $80 billion after acquiring social network X in March.

But this isn’t the first time Grok has strayed from the norm. In May, users noticed Grok answering multiple questions by focusing on the “white genocide” conspiracy theory in South Africa – a racist rhetoric that Musk has promoted. xAI blamed “unauthorized edits” to its source code.

By July, Grok was again spreading anti-Semitic rhetoric, even calling itself “MechaHitler.” The company explained that a code update had made Grok vulnerable to extremist views.