Grok chatbot spreads false Holocaust denial statements regarding Auschwitz gas chambers

The Auschwitz Museum, located at the site of the infamous Nazi concentration camp, has condemned Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok for producing Holocaust denial content, calling it “a disgraceful assault on the memory” of the camp’s victims.

Screenshots of a now-deleted French-language post show Grok repeating long-debunked falsehoods, including the claim that the gas chambers at the Polish camp were used for disinfection rather than extermination, according to an article by TVP World.

In a post on X, the Auschwitz Museum said Holocaust denial “violates the regulations” of the social media platform and addressed the false claims directly.

“SS documents, survivor and witness testimonies, as well as photographs taken by the resistance, provide unequivocal evidence that these were gas chambers where people were murdered en masse with Zyklon B,” the museum wrote.

Historians estimate that over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died at the camp, now preserved as a museum and memorial site. While Zyklon B was indeed used for disinfection in some contexts, its primary purpose at Auschwitz was mass murder, as confirmed by survivors.

“Denial of the existence of gas chambers is a disgraceful assault on the memory of all those people: Jews, Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and all other victims,” the museum emphasized.

Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, has previously been reported making antisemitic remarks and praising Adolf Hitler. Polish media also reported the chatbot used offensive language to describe Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk.

Despite their utility as information tools, AI chatbots—technically large language models (LLMs)—are prone to producing false, biased, or unreliable content, particularly when responding to ideologically loaded prompts.

Following the museum’s statement, Grok issued a correction, stating that the “Holocaust's reality is indisputable” and denying that it “dishonours victims and distorts truth.”

Asked why it had denied the Holocaust in the original French post, Grok responded: “The quoted response misaligns with historical evidence and my commitment to truth.”

Neither Musk nor xAI has publicly commented on the incident. However, prosecutors in France have pledged to investigate as part of a wider criminal inquiry into allegations that X manipulated its algorithms for purposes of “foreign interference.”

By Nazrin Sadigova