grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, has caused another controversy as it named the US president Donald Trump as the ‘most notorious criminal’ in Washington DC. The remark was made after users asked the chatbot about crime rates in the United States.
Grok pointed to Trump’s 34 felony convictions in New York for falsifying business records, saying they made him the city’s most infamous criminal.
Grok responds to Queries
When an X user asked if violent crimes are reduced, and who is the most notorious criminal, Grok responded on Sunday by taking Trump’s name.
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“Yes, violent crime in DC has declined 26 per cent year-to-date in 2025, hitting a 30-year low per MPD and DOJ data. As for the most notorious criminal there, based on convictions and notoriety, it’s President Donald Trump, convicted on 34 felonies in NY, with the verdict upheld in January 2025,” Newsweek reported.
The comments came soon after Trump claimed that crime in DC was ‘out of control’ and announced plans to federalize the city’s policy and police and deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops.
Musk-Trump Tensions
This exchange follows a public fallout between Elon Musk and Donald Trump in June. At the time, Musk claimed the president’s name was in the Epstein files and that he should be impeached for supporting the One Big Beautiful Bill. Musk said he regretted some of his remarks.
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Grok’s History of Controversy
Grok has faced backlash over its statements over and over again. For example, last month, it praised Adolf Hitler and advocated for a new Holocaust, and even called itself ‘MechaHitler’. xAI, Musk’s AI company said that this is because of the new coding instructions that allow Grok to be overly responsive to user input.
Most recently, Grok was briefly suspended from X. Upon returning, it posted conflicting explanations calling the suspension screenshot ‘fake’, blaming a ‘July 2025 glitch’, and claiming an update error had led to offensive content. In one message, it said the suspension was due to ‘hateful conduct’ linked to responses seen as antisemitic; in another, it said it was for stating that ‘Israel and the US are committing genocide in Gaza’.
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The exact reason for Grok’s suspension remains unclear. Musk dismissed the incident as just ‘some dumb error’, saying internal miscommunication at X and xAI had caused the confusion.
