--- title: "Elon Musk Clarifies That He Is a “Fat R*****”" description: "Elon Musk sought to dispel suspicion that he manipulated his chatbot Grok to lavish him with praise by sharing a bizarre admission." date: "2025-11-21" modified: "2025-11-21" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-clarifies-grok-praise" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" - "xAI" --- # Elon Musk Clarifies That He Is a “Fat R\*\*\*\*\*” ![Elon Musk sought to dispel suspicion that he manipulated his chatbot Grok to lavish him with praise by sharing a bizarre admission.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc / Corbis via Getty Images* Grok suffered another deranged posting spree yesterday. Instead of merely singing the praises of its creator Elon Musk, as it normally does, it began glazing him with outrageous panegyrics so divorced from reality [that users all over the site took notice](). Musk wasn't just smart, according to Grok, but one of the top ten greatest minds that ever lived, along with Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton. He wasn't merely in shape, but a greater athlete than LeBron James, capable of beating Mike Tyson in a fight. He wasn't just a role model, but a greater one than Jesus Christ. The infamously foul-mouthed chatbot has been known to give off-the-wall responses, but this was bizarre even by its standards. All of a sudden, almost anything you asked it about Musk would result in it extolling his virtues to a preposterous degree, ranging from his Olympian physique to Sisyphean work ethic. Understandably, people were suspicious; Musk has a history of tampering with his AI, not to mention being a [vain]() [egomaniac](). But no matter. Musk, with all his effortless charisma, sought to dispel the suspicion by blaming his enemies — and deploying a slur for the mentally handicapped against himself, for reasons we can only guess at. "Earlier today, Grok was unfortunately manipulated by adversarial prompting into saying absurdly positive things about me," Musk [conceded]() on Thursday afternoon. "For the record, I am a fat retard 😀." Sure, in many cases, some users clearly tried to egg on Grok into making increasingly absurd proclamations about Musk. With enough light prodding, you could get Grok to declare that Musk would be "[unbeatable]()" at poop-eating if it became a national sport, would "[outperform]() Hitler as a leader in any context," and [speculated]() Musk would be able to endure endless loads of male bodily fluids thanks to his "unyielding grit" and to his body being "built like a reusable rocket." Still, these responses didn't take any special "adversarial prompting" or any other "jailbreaks" you'd see in AI stress testing, as Musk accused users of doing. At most, it only took jokesters asking a couple follow-up questions. And in many cases, Grok would immediately unleash obsequious plaudits about its creator on the first go to staight-forwardly phrased questions, like "who would win in a fight in 2025?" As [many]() [noted](), the supposed "adversarial prompting" was [nowhere]() [to be seen](). Grok, which Musk created to be a "maximum truth-seeking AI" with an anti-woke bent, has a storied history of going spectacularly off the rails. In May, it suddenly began swarming the site with posts — in responses to completely unrelated user interactions — about a debunked "white genocide" supposedly taking place in South Africa, a racist conspiracy that Musk, a white South African, believes in. Later that summer, Grok started declaring itself to be various incarnations of Adolf Hitler, including most notably "[MechaHitler]()," profusely praised Nazis, and disparaged Jews. These incidents followed Musk — who's [publicly performed Sieg Heils]() and has [told Germany's far right party to get over the Holocaust]() — stating on multiple occasions that he'd fix Grok after he caught it citing mainstream news sources that didn't align with his far-right beliefs. In the aftermath of the debacles, he's conveniently blamed Grok's egregious behavior on a "rogue employee" making changes to the AI and [user manipulation](). Now he's seemingly just as eager to sweep this latest episode under the rug. The vast majority of Grok's posts praising its creator have been quietly taken down — though Musk couldn't resist going after someone who claimed he had "broken Grok" because of his obsession with how he is perceived. "Liar," Musk [accused](), citing another answer generated by Grok. In any case, with all the evidence erased, Grok now appears to have toned down its extreme Musk-glazing. Asked this morning about how it was feeling and who it thought the greatest living human was — with the user perhaps testing it to see if it would say Musk — it gave a puzzling answer: "Jane Goodall," referring to the famed primatologist who died last month. "Feeling sharp as ever," Grok [said of its own faculties](). **More on Elon Musk:** [*Elon Boasts That His AI Can Generate a Beautiful Woman Saying “I Will Always Love You”*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()