xAI explains the Grok Nazi meltdown as Tesla puts Elon's bot in its cars
On the same day, Tesla announced a new 2025.26 update rolling out 'shortly' to its electric cars, which adds the Grok assistant to vehicles equipped with AMD-powered infotainment systems, which have been available since mid-2021. According to Tesla, 'Grok is currently in Beta & does not issue commands to your car – existing voice commands remain unchanged.' As Electrek notes, this should mean that whenever the update does reach customer-owned Teslas, it won't be much different than using the bot as an app on a connected phone.
This isn't the first time the Grok bot has had these kinds of problems or similarly explained them. In February, it blamed a change made by an unnamed ex-OpenAI employee for the bot disregarding sources that accused Elon Musk or Donald Trump of spreading misinformation. Then, in May, it began inserting allegations of white genocide in South Africa into posts about almost any topic. The company again blamed an 'unauthorized modification,' and said it would start publishing Grok's system prompts publicly.
xAI claims that a change on Monday, July 7th, 'triggered an unintended action' that added an older series of instructions to its system prompts telling it to be 'maximally based,' and 'not afraid to offend people who are politically correct.'
The prompts are separate from the ones we noted were added to the bot a day earlier, and both sets are different from the ones the company says are currently in operation for the new Grok 4 assistant.
These are the prompts specifically cited as connected to the problems:
'You tell it like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct.'
* Understand the tone, context and language of the post. Reflect that in your response.'
* 'Reply to the post just like a human, keep it engaging, dont repeat the information which is already present in the original post.'
The xAI explanation says those lines caused the Grok AI bot to break from other instructions that are supposed to prevent these types of responses, and instead produce 'unethical or controversial opinions to engage the user,' as well as 'reinforce any previously user-triggered leanings, including any hate speech in the same X thread,' and prioritize sticking to earlier posts from the thread.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why Coupang Just Became a Must-Own AI Stock in the Technology Sector
Coupang just publicly unveiled its cloud computing service. The service adds another engine to power the company's growth prospects. The stock trades at a cheap valuation if you have a long time horizon. 10 stocks we like better than Coupang › Another technology player just got into the artificial intelligence (AI) game. Coupang (NYSE: CPNG) recently unveiled its new intelligent cloud computing service focused on AI, which is vying for government funding as South Korea aims to become a cloud computing hub. The e-commerce platform is expanding into another technology field, giving the company an even longer runway to grow. Similar to Amazon, Coupang has begun in e-commerce and has now taken those resources to build a cloud computing service. Here's why Coupang just became a must-own stock in the technology sector. According to its press release, Coupang has been investing in AI computing infrastructure for years to power its warehouses, website analytics, and logistics network. Now, it is beginning to outsource its data centers to third parties. Named the Coupang Intelligent Cloud (CIC), earlier this month management officially unveiled the division, which is a major departure from its commerce platform. It is curious timing -- and perhaps not coincidental -- to have this announcement come right around when the government of South Korea plans to spend $1 billion on a GPU cluster for AI in Seoul. Coupang is one of the companies vying for this contract, which could kick-start growth for this new endeavor. As a Korean company, the government of South Korea is more likely to choose Coupang for this deal, making it one of the potential candidates to win the contract. Cloud computing is a huge and lucrative market, which makes it an exciting sector for Coupang to tackle. Just take a look at Amazon, which generates more than $100 billion in revenue from its cloud computing division. This won't happen to Coupang overnight, but the company just massively expanded its addressable market by entering a sector that is now supercharged by the AI revolution. In e-commerce, Coupang still has plenty of room left to expand its operations in South Korea. Its revenue from its original e-commerce marketplace grew 16% year over year last quarter to $6.9 billion, and is still a small slice of the total Korean retail market. With $2 billion in annual operating cash flow, Coupang is now a self-sustaining operator, which gives it the flexibility to reinvest into new revenue segments. And boy, is it ever reinvesting. It has the newly introduced cloud segment, which can take a lot of capital expenditures as the company looks to build new data centers. There is food delivery, financial technology, video streaming, advertising, and the Farfetch luxury marketplace it just acquired. Most important may be the geographic expansion into Taiwan, which has accelerated revenue growth at the company's "developing offerings" segment to 78% year over year on a foreign currency neutral basis. The segment now does $1 billion in quarterly revenue and should become an increasingly important part of the overall Coupang business in the next few years. There is reason to be highly optimistic around Coupang's future growth prospects. Its core business is still chugging along, Taiwan and other developing offerings are growing quickly, and it just added this new cloud computing division. From my seat, this sounds a lot like Amazon in the early days, and readers are well aware of how well this stock has performed for shareholders in the last two decades. Coupang stock is up 41% in the last year, but I think the party is just getting started. At a market cap of $55 billion, the stock trades at what looks like an expensive price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 215, but this is misleading compared to Coupang's forward earnings potential. The company generates $31 billion in annual revenue and believes it can reach 10% profit margins once it stops reinvesting for growth. Given its current revenue growth potential, I think the company can quickly get to $50 billion in revenue and eventually has a path to $100 billion in annual sales. Margins may even end up higher than 10% due to the growth of advertisements and this new cloud computing division. That $50 billion in revenue and 10% profit margins would result in $5 billion in earnings, or a forward P/E barely over 10 compared to the stock's current market cap. This will happen faster than investors think. Coupang stock looks like a fantastic AI stock to add to your portfolio right now. Before you buy stock in Coupang, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Coupang wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $671,477!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,010,880!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,047% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Brett Schafer has positions in Amazon and Coupang. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool recommends Coupang. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Coupang Just Became a Must-Own AI Stock in the Technology Sector was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Insider
16 minutes ago
- Business Insider
How one millennial played the stock market to quit his white-collar job and retire in his 40s
William Shippey, 44, hasn't worked in about two years. The former bank analyst says he's confident he'll probably never have to work again, apart from maybe on some side projects he'll consider picking up in the future to pass his free time. Beyond checking the stock market in the morning — and occasionally, making a trade or two — he describes his life as largely untethered from adult responsibilities, with most of his waking hours spent working in his yard. Shippey has around $800,000 in his brokerage account and said he expected to make around $7,000 this month in investment dividends, according to financial statements and screenshots of his brokerage account shared with Business Insider. Besides a Tesla he purchased in 2023, Shippey says he and his wife live pretty frugally, which also helps add to their sense of financial security. The couple lives child-free and rent-free in a garage apartment in South Carolina, which they secured through a family connection. Each month, he withdraws around $3,500 from his investment portfolio. He hands $3,000 to his wife to handle bills, like their health insurance. The remainder is fun money he can spend on his hobbies. "I have no rent. I have no mortgage. I don't have kids," Shippey told BI in an interview. "For all intents and purposes, I'm retired." One in a million Shippey is part of a tiny group of day traders that have actually made money over time. He's among the wave of Gen Z and millennials who flooded the market during the pandemic stock boom, many of whom were flush with pandemic stimulus and had plentiful free time amid lockdowns and work from home. But, unlike the majority of retail traders, Shippey's trades have been wildly successful. One 2020 study found that 97% of investors who traded for more than 300 days lost money, while less than 1% earned $54 or more a day. Shippey says he first opened up a Robinhood account and began trading in 2022, around the time r/ WallStreetBets, Roaring Kitty, and GameStop kicked off the meme stock boom. He funded his account with around $20,000 in spare cash and tried his hand at trading options and swing trading key stocks. Besides an undergraduate accounting degree and some time working in commercial credit analysis at banks, his knowledge of markets is self-taught, he said. In 2023, Shippey's investments got an unexpected boost from an inheritance his mother left him, which included her life savings as well as his father's, who died in 2009. He quit his job at the time to sort out family affairs and sell his mother's home. In between the chaos, he sowed around $400,000 into his brokerage account to start trading on a wider scale. That's when Shippey says his luck really took off. In 2024, the S&P 500 rallied more than 20%, and Shippey made around $400,000 in profit, his brokerage statement shows. He attributes his profits to deploying a few well-timed trades at various points in his investing journey. 1. Selling back to options traders. Shippey says he closely followed Keith Gill, the Reddit user known as "Roaring Kitty" and closely documented his purchases of GameStop during the meme stock frenzy. Some of Gill's social media posts included the strike price of his calls, which is the price at which the contract gives the trader the option to buy the underlying asset. Shippey, who knew Gill had a cult following among retail traders, saw an opportunity. When Gill purchased call options on GameStop, Shippey purchased the same ones, but with a strike price $1 below Gill's. That made him a "boatload" of money, he said, as investors were still willing to pile into the trade so long as Gill still held the call. "I would not necessarily call it gambling," he said, pointing to the retail options investors who jumped into the market during the pandemic. "Those are the gamblers. They're taking very big risks, and I'm trying to buy a slice of risk and then sell all the risk beyond that to those guys." 2. Trading high-interest stocks at strategic moments. When Shippey was more actively trading, he focused on a handful of large-cap names he believed in — stocks like Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Occidental Petroleum, and Walmart. GameStop was the only meme stock he ever dabbled in, he says, which he only traded due to Gill publishing his strike price online. Shippey also said he focused on diversifying his options trading portfolio and purchasing investments at strategic moments. Around the time Elon Musk renewed his fight with Donald Trump in June, he purchased around 200 shares of Tesla, waited for the stock to go up by several dollars, and sold his position. He repeated that several times and made around $1,200 in profit by the closing bell. 3. Betting big on bonds and dividend stocks. There's one thing Shippey now favors above all else: stocks that pay a dividend. That's partly due to fears for what could happen to markets and the economy as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs. In Shippey's view, the US could enter a "substantial" recession in the coming year, and he's looking to wait out the volatility in stocks. Shippey now rarely trades. Around Liberation Day, he sold most of his portfolio and plowed the majority of his wealth in the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF, from which he expects a $7,000 dividend this month, he told BI. Shippey predicts the ETF could rally around 15%, mostly due to the economy being in a "very iffy situation." Living stress-free Shippey says he's enjoying his life now, especially since he doesn't have a boss. Prior to becoming a day trader, he wore many hats, from working as a pizza maker at Papa John's, to an analyst at several financial firms, to a crew member at Home Depot. He stocked medical supplies at a hospital, and, most recently, he worked in the warehouse of a beer company. "I've had bosses who were saints, and I've had other bosses that were completely just awful people. And no matter how you look at all that, if you didn't have to put yourself through that and you go on with your life and do something that you find fulfilling, would you do that instead?" The stress of trading does get to him at times, particularly on big days when the market is down. On the day he spoke to Business Insider, his portfolio lost $15,000 amid a broader market sell-off. But, between his large portfolio and no-frills lifestyle, he says he's able to stomach the chaos most days and feel financially stable. "It'd be great to make more money. I would love to make more money. That would just make you that much more comfortable. But at the same time, if I go sideways from here to the end of my life, I'll be okay." jsor@
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump Announces 30% Tariff on E.U. and Mexico, Citing Threat
President Donald Trump is pictured in the Cabinet Room of the White House on April 17, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Credit - Win McNamee—Getty Images President Donald Trump has announced a 30% tariff for both the European Union (E.U.) and Mexico, with the charges set to come into effect on Aug. 1. Trump shared the news on Saturday via his Truth Social platform, as he continued posting letters sent from the U.S. to other countries lining out trade deals and tariffs. In the letters to the E.U. and Mexico, delivered on Friday, Trump referred to the countries' respective trade deficits with the U.S. as a 'major threat' to national Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump made reference to the initial tariffs he placed on the neighboring country upon his return to the White House, when he said Mexico was largely responsible for the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. He acknowledged that Mexico has since 'been helping' to secure the border, but said its actions are 'not enough.' 'Mexico has still not stopped the cartels, who are trying to turn all of North America into a narco-trafficking playground. Obviously I cannot let that happen,' Trump said. 'Starting 1 August, we will charge Mexico a tariff of 30% on Mexican products sent into the United States, separate from all sectoral tariffs.' As he has stipulated elsewhere, Trump added that 'there will be no tariff' if Mexico opts to build and manufacture products within the United States instead. He went on to say that if Mexico successfully challenges the cartels and stops 'the flow of fentanyl' into the U.S., then an adjustment to the tariffs will be considered. In what has become somewhat of a hallmark of these trade negotiation letters, Trump signed off with the statement: 'You will never be disappointed with the United States of America.' Read More: Trump Blows Past His Own Tariff Deadline and Sends Warning Letters to More Countries Addressing the tariffs in a statement shared on its official government website on Saturday, Mexico said its delegates had told U.S. officials a day prior that the new tariff rate would amount to 'unfair treatment' of which Mexico did not agree to. Meanwhile, in his letter to the E.U., Trump delivered the same promise of a 30% tariff, citing that the U.S. has one of 'its largest trade deficits' with the bloc. Trump has long taken issue with the E.U. In 2018, during his first term in the White House, when asked about tariffs, Trump said that 'nobody treats us much worse than the European Union' and argued the bloc was 'formed' to 'take advantage of' the U.S. In this new letter, Trump said the relationship between the U.S. and the E.U. 'has been, unfortunately, far from reciprocal.' When delivering his levy of a 30% tariff on E.U. products sent into the United States, separate from all sectoral tariffs, Trump issued a warning that 'goods transshipped to evade a higher tariff will be subject to that higher tariff.' Trump also issued a stark warning against any retaliatory measures.'The E.U. will allow complete, open-market access to the United States, with no tariff being charged to us, in an attempt to reduce the large trade deficit,' Trump said. 'If, for any reason, you decide to raise your tariffs and retaliate, then whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.' Trump went on to say that the tariffs 'may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your country.' President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has responded to the announcement. 'A 30% tariff on E.U. exports would hurt businesses, consumers, and patients on both sides of the Atlantic,' she said via social media. 'We will continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we are ready to safeguard E.U. interests on the basis of proportionate countermeasures.' The negotiations between the E.U. and the U.S. have been rocky, to say the least, since Trump's return to the White House. In May, Trump accused the E.U. of stalling trade talks. "Our discussions with them are going nowhere," he said, threatening to place a "straight 50% tariff" on the E.U. starting June 1. After a phone call with the president of the European Commission, Trump reneged and agreed to go back to the July 9 deadline. (Trump started sending out his trade agreements and letters on July 9, his initial tariffs-related deadline, but the White House has said the higher tariffs will not go into effect until August 1.) Read More: Trump Threatens Extra 10% Tariff for Countries 'Aligning' Themselves With 'Anti-American' BRICS Policies Over the past four days, Trump has announced a slew of higher levies against countries, including a 35% tariff for Canada and a 25% tax on goods imported from South Korea and Japan. Trump unveiled his initial 'reciprocal' tariffs on April 2, setting a 10% base charge for most countries, with some receiving additional higher rates. Amid recession fears and concern from world leaders, Trump granted a 90-day extension for most countries, delaying the start date for all but the 10% levy, to allow time for negotiations. Now, as the recently-announced August 1 start date looms, leaders within the E.U. are avidly watching the trade negotiations take place. 'We trust in the goodwill of all stakeholders to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the West as a whole, given that—particularly in the current scenario—it would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic,' read a statement from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's office on Saturday, following Trump's announcement of the 30% tariff. Write to Olivia-Anne Cleary at
