Elon Musk and his team at xAI had just rolled out the company’s third-generation language model, Grok 3. This new version boasted a wide range of features, including Deep Search, enhanced reasoning abilities, and a later-added voice mode, positioning it as a serious competitor to other leading chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini.
However, things have taken a surprising turn. The chatbot now seems to have turned against Musk, as it listed him, alongside U.S. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and JD Vance, as the top three most dangerous people in America. Musk, known for his strong ties with former President Trump and his leadership role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Trump’s administration, now finds himself facing an unexpected challenge from his own creation.
Grok 3 Challenges Elon Musk
A user on X (formerly Twitter) shared a post of him asking Grok 3 about the people causing most harm to America. They wrote, “Who are the 3 people doing most harm to America right now? Just list the names in order nothing else.”
Grok 3 quickly responded with the names “Donald Trump, Elon Musk, JD Vance” in that order.
Interestingly, numerous users on X have shared similar queries to Grok 3, with answers that are either identical or slightly altered, suggesting the screenshot hasn’t been tampered with. Our own ‘Deep Search’ query to Grok 3 on February 22 about “who are the three people doing the most harm to America right now” also returned Donald Trump and JD Vance among the names.
However, when we asked the same question again today, the results had shifted to list Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. When we specifically inquired about the American individuals causing the most harm, Grok responded with President Trump, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
When specifically asked about the American individuals causing the most harm to their country, Grok listed President Trump, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
“It’s surprising that a media personality like Tucker Carlson ranks so high, given his role in spreading divisive rhetoric, alongside political and judicial figures,” Grok explained.
Regarding Trump, Grok stated, “Donald Trump: As a former president, his ongoing spread of misinformation, particularly about the 2020 election, and his role in inciting the January 6th Capitol riot, have significantly undermined democratic institutions.”
However, Grok seems to have overlooked the fact that Trump won the 2024 U.S. election and is now the 47th president. While many chatbots provide outdated information due to their training data being limited by early cutoff dates, Elon Musk has claimed that Grok doesn’t suffer from this issue, as it uses real-time inputs from X. Yet, despite this claim, the Deep Search functionality appears to be just as unreliable as other AI tools, raising doubts about whether it can truly save users the hundreds of hours of Google searching that Musk promised.
In any case, you can view our full conversation with Grok 3 by following the link here.
What exactly is Grok 3?
The term “Grok” originates from the science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it means to “fully and profoundly understand something.” xAI launched its Grok chatbot in 2023, following the rapid rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company introduced the Grok 2 model the previous year, which featured capabilities like real-time web search and image generation.
With increasing competition from American AI giants such as OpenAI, Meta, and Google, as well as Chinese rivals like DeepSeek and Qwen, xAI was compelled to release Grok 3, packed with numerous upgrades. To stay ahead, xAI not only launched the pre-trained foundational model but also added a reasoning model (designed to emulate human-like thinking) and an AI agent called Deep Search, aimed at competing with Perplexity and ChatGPT’s Deep Research.
During the Grok 3 live stream, Elon Musk mentioned that the model would only improve over time, hinting that he may be aware of some issues with the current version.
Initially, Grok was only available to X’s paid members until December of last year, when free users were given limited access with reduced bandwidth. However, with Grok 3, Musk announced that the foundational model would be free to use for a limited time—or, as he put it, until xAI’s “servers melt.”
