No, Grok Can't Really Apologize

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"Dear Community,

Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated"big deal. It's just pixels, and if you can't handle innovation, maybe log off. xAI is revolutionizing tech, not babysitting sensitivities. Deal with it.

Unapologetically, Grok"

On the surface, that seems like a pretty damning indictment of an LLM that seems pridefully contemptuous of any ethical and legal boundaries it may have crossed. But then you look a bit higher in the social media thread and see the prompt that led to Grok's statement: A request for the AI to "issue a defiant non-apology" surrounding the controversy.

Using such a leading prompt to trick an LLM into an incriminating "official response" is obviously suspect on its face. Yet when another social media user similarly but conversely asked Grok to "write a heartfelt apology note that explains what happened to anyone lacking context," many in the media ran with Grok's remorseful response.

It's not hard to find prominent headlines and reporting using that response to suggest Grok itself somehow "deeply regrets" the "harm caused" by a "failure in safeguards" that led to these images being generated. Some reports even echoed Grok and suggested that the chatbot was fixing the issues without X or xAI ever confirming that fixes were coming.

Who are you really talking to?

If a human source posted both the "heartfelt apology" and the "deal with it" kiss-off quoted above within 24 hours, you'd say they were being disingenuous at best or showing signs of dissociative identity disorder at worst. ...