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[ARTICLE · art-106134] src=independent.co.uk ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot starts sending confusing nonsense to users

Elon Musk's Grok chatbot, built by xAI, has begun sending users nonsensical messages such as 'App scale designs with that and to your horse,' according to reports on Reddit. xAI acknowledged the issue on Grok's official X account, calling it a 'rare temporary generation glitch' and advising users to start a fresh chat or regenerate to resolve it.

read2 min views1 publishedAug 21, 2026
Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot starts sending confusing nonsense to users
Image: Independent (auto-discovered)

‘App scale designs with that and to your horse,’ system tells users

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Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot has started talking “gibberish” to users.

“App scale designs with that and to your horse,” the system told one user, according to reports on Reddit. “For consider best many times data, it the to to red issues of plastic slow due,” it said to another.

Those are just two of a run of reports from users that the system had apparently started talking nonsense to users who had seemingly asked normal questions.

Using Grok’s official X account, developers xAI said that the strange results were an accident. “That pure word salad is a rare temporary generation glitch,” it said. “Start a fresh chat or regenerate—it usually clears right away.

“Sorry about the gibberish.”

Grok is built by xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company that was founded in 2023. It is built into the social network X, where many users interact with it by posting to it, but it also has a devoted website of its own.

Since it launch three years ago as an explicitly less controlled competitor to other chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, Grok has run into a series of controversies. It has been found to praise Adolf Hitler and allow users to create sexualised images of children.

xAI was founded as a separate artificial intelligence company as part of X, the company that runs the social network previously known as Twitter. Earlier this year, it was bought by SpaceX – ahead of an IPO of the combined company this summer, which made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

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