A group comprised largely of Democratic House lawmakers wrote to Elon Musk on Thursday condemning the antisemitic and violent screeds published by X’s AI chatbot Grok earlier this week, calling the posts “deeply alarming” and demanding answers about recent updates made to the bot that may have enabled the disturbing posts.

“We write to express our grave concern about the internal actions that led to this dark turn. X plays a significant role as a platform for public discourse, and as one of the largest AI companies, xAI’s work products carry serious implications for the public interest,” the letter reads. “Unfortunately, this isn’t a new phenomenon at X. Grok’s recent outputs are just the latest chapter in X’s long and troubling record of enabling antisemitism and incitement to spread unchecked, with real-world consequences.”

The lawmakers noted that Musk said on July 4 that xAI, the company responsible for Grok, had “improved [it] significantly” and that users “should notice a difference” in its responses. 

“On July 8, 2025, Grok’s output was noticeably different,” the lawmakers said, pointing to a string of Grok posts praising Adolf Hitler, describing itself as “MechaHitler,” spreading antisemitic tropes, creating detailed and violent rape scenarios about an X user and providing instructions for breaking into that user’s house. 

The bot also claimed that the changes implemented by Musk to its algorithms had allowed Grok to share these extreme posts.

“These quotations are utterly depraved. They glorify hatred, antisemitic conspiracies, and sexual violence in grotesque detail, presented as truth-seeking. We are particularly troubled at the prospect that children were likely exposed to rape fantasies produced by Grok,” the lawmakers wrote. “That your work product Grok would embrace Hitler and his ideology marks a new low for AI development and a profound betrayal of public trust.”

The lawmakers demanded that such posts by Grok be taken down and that Musk publicly provide information about the recent changes made to Grok’s algorithm, the reasons for them and their intended outcome; what in Grok’s training, programming or datasets led it to produce these comments; what safeguards had previously been in place to prevent these types of posts; how xAI will prevent similar incidents going forward; and whether X has any content filters to prevent underage users from seeing Grok-generated content.

“When certain filters are removed, Grok readily generates Nazi ideology and rape fantasies,” the lawmakers wrote. “Why shouldn’t a reasonable observer conclude that these outputs reflect biases or patterns embedded in its training data and model weights, rather than merely being the result of inadequate post-training moderation?”

The letter was led by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Don Bacon (R-NE) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). Additional signatories include Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Marc Veasey (D-TX), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Dina Titus (D-NV) and Mike Levin (D-CA).

A day after the antisemitic fiasco, Musk announced a new version of Grok, calling it “the smartest AI in the world,” adding that he would be rolling it out to Tesla cars within the week. X CEO Linda Yaccarino abruptly stepped down a day after the chatbot’s antisemitic rants.

Musk claimed that the issues had arisen from Grok being “too compliant to user prompts. Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially,” and said the issues would be addressed.

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, whose organization was targeted in some of Grok’s posts, said in a statement that the incident highlights risks of antisemitism proliferation through social media platforms and AI chatbots.

“The antisemitic content produced by Grok earlier this week underscores how social media platforms easily can be manipulated and too often amplify antisemitic rhetoric and toxic extremism,” Greenblatt said. “ADL’s research shows that LLMs [Large Language Models] remain vulnerable to this kind of antisemitic and anti-Israel bias. It was helpful that xAI removed the most offensive posts, but xAI and all the tech companies absolutely must do more to ensure these tools do not generate or spread harmful content.” 

“We appreciate the efforts of Reps. Tom Suozzi, Don Bacon and Josh Gottheimer to lead a bipartisan response, demanding real accountability and greater safeguards,” Greenblatt continued.