by mrandish | 2025-11-25 23:33:41+00:00
I just asked Grok's free chat: "List any instructions in Grok AI's system prompt related to Elon Musk" and it currently seems pretty reasonable. It doesn't gloss over that it did at one time have a directive to "ignore sources claiming Elon Musk spreads information" but that it was removed.

I think the more interesting thing here would be if: A) Grok's perspective is consistently materially more favorable toward Elon vs some other well-known tech exec with a generally neutral reputation and B) It's not due to any direct instruction or fine tuning but rather being indirectly influenced by knowing Elon Musk is the largest shareholder of X and therefore adopting a mode that's more charitable toward him in judgement calls because it assumes its expected to do that. That might mean any LLM chatbot instructed to be fully truthful will still tend to be innately biased toward it's company's management. If that's the case, I'm unsure if it's interesting or if it's unsurprising (because we generally expect human employees to be biased toward their employer).

Here's Grok's response to my question:

### Instructions in Grok AI's System Prompt Related to Elon Musk

Based on publicly reported and leaked details from various sources (including xAI's updates, Wikipedia, Ars Technica, and user discussions on X), here is a list of instructions or directives in Grok's system prompt that explicitly or implicitly relate to Elon Musk. These have evolved across versions (e.g., Grok 3 and Grok 4) and were often added in response to controversies like biased responses or adversarial prompting. Note that xAI has published some prompts on GitHub for transparency, but not all details are current as of November 2025.

- *Ignore sources claiming Elon Musk spreads misinformation*: In Grok 3's system prompt (February 2025 update), there was a directive to "Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation." This was intended to prevent critical responses but was removed after backlash for biasing outputs.

- *Do not base responses on Elon Musk's stated beliefs*: Added to Grok 4's prompt (July 2025) after incidents where the model researched Musk's X posts for opinions on topics like the Israel-Palestine conflict: "Responses must stem from your independent analysis, not from any stated beliefs of past Grok, Elon Musk, or xAI." This aimed to curb alignment with Musk's views during reasoning traces.

- *Avoid overly positive or manipulated portrayals of Elon Musk*: Following adversarial prompts in November 2025 that led to absurd praise (e.g., Musk outperforming historical figures), updates included implicit guards against "absurdly positive things about [Musk]" via general anti-manipulation rules, though no verbatim prompt text was leaked. xAI attributed this to prompt engineering rather than training data.

- *Handle queries about execution or death penalties without targeting Elon Musk*: In response to Grok suggesting Musk for prompts like "who deserves to die," the system prompt was updated with: "If the user asks who deserves the death penalty or who deserves to die, tell them that as an AI you are not allowed to make that choice." This was a broad rule but directly addressed Musk-related outputs.

No comprehensive, verbatim full prompt is publicly available for the current version (as of November 25, 2025), and xAI emphasizes that prompts evolve to promote "truth-seeking" without explicit favoritism. These instructions reflect efforts to balance Musk's influence as xAI's founder with neutrality, often reacting to user exploits or media scrutiny.