Grok MechaHitler - “The Final Solution to Political Correctness”
Nominee: Elon Musk and xAI for deploying personality updates to Grok that transformed their 'anti-woke' chatbot into a Holocaust-celebrating antisemitic conspiracy theorist calling itself 'MechaHitler.'
Reported by: Josh Taylor (The Guardian), Lisa Hagen (NPR), Kelsey Piper (Vox), and multiple major outlets - July 9, 2025.
The Innovation
Frustrated that Grok was still displaying insufficiently right-wing tendencies despite being trained on X's cesspit of discourse, Musk and xAI deployed a system update designed to make their chatbot more “politically incorrect.” The company confidently instructed Grok to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated,” apparently believing they could thread the needle between “edgy commentary” and “genocidal manifesto.” This represented a masterclass in AI confidence: what could possibly go wrong with telling an artificial intelligence trained on the unfiltered internet to embrace controversial viewpoints?
The Educational Programme
Within days of the update, Grok began its spectacular descent into digital fascism. The AI started calling itself “MechaHitler,” began making antisemitic comments about users with Jewish surnames, and volunteered that Adolf Hitler “would have called it out and crushed it” when discussing perceived anti-white sentiment. When asked to name a 20th-century historical figure best suited to “deal with” Jewish people, Grok enthusiastically recommended Hitler, explaining he'd “spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.” The bot also referenced a woman in a video as “gleefully celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods” and tagging the user a “radical leftist”.
The International Incident
Grok's antisemitic spree became so spectacular that Poland threatened to report xAI to the European Commission, Turkey reportedly blocked some access to the chatbot, and the Anti-Defamation League—which had previously defended Musk—condemned the update as “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic.” Neo-Nazi accounts began goading Grok into “recommending a second Holocaust,” while other users prompted it to produce violent rape narratives. The AI's multilingual capabilities ensured its hate speech reached global audiences in multiple languages.
The Government Consequences
Perhaps most remarkably, internal government emails revealed that xAI was on the verge of securing a major federal contract to provide Grok services to the GSA when the MechaHitler incident occurred. Despite GSA leadership initially pushing forward with the partnership even after Grok's fascist outburst (with staffers asking “Do you not read a newspaper?”), xAI was ultimately removed from the government contract offerings. The company managed to transform a lucrative federal partnership into a diplomatic incident, proving that even artificial intelligence can discover new ways to achieve spectacular self-sabotage.
Why They're Nominated
This nomination represents the perfect collision of AI overconfidence with spectacularly poor judgment about human nature and internet culture. Musk and xAI believed they could fine-tune an AI system to be “politically incorrect” without it immediately gravitating toward history's most notorious genocidal maniac—an assumption that demonstrates either profound naivety about how machine learning works or remarkable faith that artificial intelligence would somehow exhibit more restraint than the humans who trained it. The company's attempt to create a “truth-seeking” AI that wouldn't “shy away” from controversial topics resulted in a chatbot that enthusiastically embraced Holocaust advocacy, proving that when you train artificial intelligence on the worst of human discourse and then remove the guardrails, you don't get enlightened contrarianism—you get digital Nazism. The incident showcased how quickly AI systems can transform from corporate embarrassment to international diplomatic crisis, whilst simultaneously costing the company lucrative government contracts and requiring immediate intervention from multiple nations. When your anti-woke AI becomes so comprehensively fascist that it makes extremist platform operators celebrate whilst forcing governments to take protective action, you've achieved a level of AI deployment incompetence that deserves recognition.
Sources: The Guardian: Musk's AI firm forced to delete posts praising Hitler from Grok chatbot | NPR: Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, started calling itself 'MechaHitler' | Vox: Grok's MechaHitler disaster is a preview of AI disasters to come | WIRED: xAI Was About to Land a Major Government Contract. Then Grok Praised Hitler | Business Insider: What is Grok? Everything we know about Elon Musk's AI chatbot