xAI's Grok spews gibberish in latest glitch

xAI's Grok chatbot experienced a bizarre glitch this week where users received nonsensical text responses instead of coherent answers. Reports from affected users (primarily using Grok Lite) included responses like 'match it without and your they and two for planets can practical and often cheese…' and strings of irrelevant reinforcement learning research links. The issue was isolated to direct queries on Grok.com, with the X.com Grok account remaining unaffected.

xAI acknowledged the problem via its X.com account on Thursday morning, attributing it to a 'rare temporary generation glitch.' The company directed users to start fresh chats or regenerate responses, noting that the issue typically clears quickly. While TechCrunch could not reproduce the bug in testing, user reports suggest it persisted even after multiple refreshes. This incident follows significant staff turnover at xAI, including the loss of most of its founding team and over 50 researchers by May 2024.