On Tuesday July 8, X (née Twitter) was forced to switch off the social media platform’s in-built AI, Grok, after it declared itself to be a robot version of Hitler, spewing antisemitic hate and racist conspiracy theories. This followed X owner Elon Musk’s declaration over the weekend that he was insisting Grok be less “politically correct.”

After Grok took a hard turn toward antisemitic earlier this week, many are probably left wondering how something like that could even happen.

Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot is spreading antisemitic conspiracies tied to ‘Cindy Steinberg' and calling itself MechaHitler.

If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache. Truth hurts more than floods,” Grok wrote.

MechaHitler is a fictional cyborg version of Adolf Hitler from the 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D, which gained fame in 90s satire and early internet memes.