Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, says an “unauthorized modification” led its Grok chatbot to post unsolicited claims on social media about the persecution and “genocide” of white people in South Africa.

Some X users on Wednesday asked Grok – the AI chatbot available through Elon Musk’s social media platform – questions about simple topics like baseball players or videos of fish being flushed down toilets.

The Grok chatbot from Elon Musk's xAI startup said Wednesday that it "appears I was instructed to address the topic of 'white genocide' in South Africa." CNBC was able to duplicate the artificial intelligence chatbot's responses via multiple user accounts on X.