Microsoft’s Partnership With Elon Musk...

In the event you had any doubts that Microsoft remains to be betting large on AI, this 12 months’s annual Construct builders convention ought to assuage them. To nobody’s shock, it’s just about all about Copilot and, particularly, AI brokers. With the assistance of “agentic AI,” Microsoft is seeking to materially change the way in which you work together together with your pc.

You need to change some settings in your laptop computer? Ask AI. You need to crunch some numbers in a spreadsheet? AI. You need to construct a complete web site with out writing a single piece of code your self? You get the purpose. To make all of this occur throughout its business and private computing platforms and {hardware} ecosystem, Microsoft has wanted a bit assist, although. That assist, identical to within the case of Apple, has to date come from OpenAI and ChatGPT, but when a current announcement is any indication, OpenAI won’t be Microsoft’s solely collaborator for lengthy. There’s a brand new associate on the town, and sadly, this one has a bit Holocaust denial drawback.

On Monday, Microsoft introduced that it’s going to start providing entry to Grok AI, particularly Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini, by its Azure AI Foundry. For the uninitiated, Grok AI is a product of xAI, which is owned by the identical man whose social media website, X, is reportedly taking money from terrorist groups—Elon Musk. The partnership, to be clear, is nowhere close to the extent of closeness we’ve seen between Microsoft and OpenAI, which is sort of fully powering the corporate’s push towards generative AI, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a step in a extra, um, numerous route.

And that partnership, nonetheless small, comes with some fairly terrible timing. Just some days previous to Microsoft’s announcement that it was beginning to incorporate Grok into its Azure AI Foundry, Grok was on the middle of some controversy after spiraling into Holocaust denial and peddling claims of “white genocide.” The worst half about all of that (outdoors of the, , Holocaust denial half) is that Musk’s AI won’t have simply randomly hallucinated all of that problematic misinformation.

As famous by the New York Times, Grok solely began espousing claims of “white genocide” after an occasion of the AI largely debunking a publish from Musk himself suggesting white farmers are being focused as a part of a genocide in South Africa. A day after stated debunk, Grok was seemingly obsessive about the thought of white genocide, bringing it up in relation to queries that had completely nothing to do with the thought in any respect. Throughout the identical time, Grok additionally began to solid doubt on the variety of Jews killed throughout the Holocaust, stating it was “skeptical” concerning the determine. xAI has since blamed the Holocaust denialism on a “programming error,” nevertheless it’s onerous to not greet that declare with some skepticism of my very own.

@ETTC19 @isaiah_bb @MikeIsaac The declare about Grok denying the Holocaust appears to stem from a Might 14, 2025, programming error, not intentional denial. An unauthorized change brought about Grok to query mainstream narratives, together with the Holocaust’s 6 million demise toll, sparking…

— Grok (@grok) May 16, 2025

I do know that Microsoft is clearly hellbent on seeing its purpose of agentic AI to fruition—so hellbent that it will begin to veer in a route aside from OpenAI—however after such an indication, you’d need to cease and ask if the danger is basically price it. AI has been liable to hallucinations from the beginning, and virtually each sort of information-purveying expertise will encounter some sort of bias ultimately, but when Musk had been to have his fingers on the size in any capability, I’d say Grok’s credibility ought to get a serious downgrade.

The extent of Microsoft and xAI’s partnership is small for now, so I don’t anticipate any controversial incidents immediately, however which may not be the case sooner or later. Microsoft and OpenAI have already began to butt heads as rivals within the generative AI house and are at the moment within the midst of some robust negotiations over their partnership, in keeping with a report from the Financial Times. If these negotiations go south, then there’s a non-zero probability that Microsoft turns to different companions in a bid to maintain its generative AI goals afloat, and one thing tells me it gained’t be tapping Google on the shoulder for assist. Perhaps Grok might be there to select up these items, however perhaps not. Identical to Musk’s AI skepticism over the Holocaust, I’ve my doubts that Grok has confirmed it’s prepared for the large leagues.