Radhika Parashar
- Musk’s “Baby Grok” plan has garnered strongly discouraging responses on social media
- Grok has been landing in legal troubles for generating politically incorrect and antisemitic responses
- For now, more details on Musk’s “Baby Grok” plans remain awaited
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk is planning a prequel spin-off to its popular AI chatbot, Grok, in the coming days. The chief of Tesla, SpaceX, and X shared his intentions to launch “Baby Grok” — aiming to make the chatbot kid-friendly. The timing of Musk’s post has raised eyebrows given that Grok has been facing bans and restrictions in multiple parts of the world for generating questionable and racially discriminating content around political figures and historic events while engaging with the users.
Musk, 54, shared his vision with his 222.22 million followers on X through a one-liner post on July 20. He also tagged the official X handle of Grok’s parent firm xAI, that is also founded and primarily owned by Musk himself.
Within hours of Musk posting the update, it garnered over 28.3 million views opening floodgates of comments.
Many said they do not feel comfortable with the idea, noting that children should be encouraged to play outside than being introduced to screens and advanced technologies like AI at an impressionable age. In addition, many decided to discourage the billionaire from bringing Grok the minors owing to the recent controversies that put a ding on the its reputation and credibility.
Some individuals, did however, support Musk’s Baby Grok plan predicting that this AI model could tutor millions of children at home.
In the last few days, Grok has found itself under the spotlight for multiple wrong reasons. Earlier this week, for instance, a Turkish court imposed a ban on Grok after the chatbot produced “politically incorrect” responses around Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother, and the members from Turkey’s media and political communities.
Poland, meanwhile, is seeking an intervention into Grok’s content generation from the European Union (EU) regulators. The country’s ministry of digitisation wishes for the EU regulators to levy a hefty fine on Grok and xAI.
Reacting to repeated complaints of Grok siding by Hitler in many instances and initiating antisemitic responses, the official X handle of the chatbot said steps were being taken to remove these inappropriate posts.
For now, more details on Musk’s “Baby Grok” plans remain awaited.
