linda yaccarino

Musk’s Grok 4 launches one day after chatbot generated Hitler praise on X

AI, AI assistants, AI behavior, AI benchmarks, AI ethics, AI pricing, AI regulation, Anthropic, antisemitism, Biz & IT, chatbots, elon musk, Google, grok, large language models, linda yaccarino, machine learning, multimodal AI, openai, Twitter, X, xAI / Mike M. / July 10, 2025

Musk has also apparently used the Grok chatbots as an automated extension of his trolling habits, showing examples of Grok 3 producing “based” opinions that criticized the media in February. In May, Grok on X began repeatedly generating outputs about white genocide in South Africa, and most recently, we’ve seen the Grok Nazi output debacle. It’s admittedly difficult to take Grok seriously as a technical product when it’s linked to so many examples of unserious and capricious applications of the technology.

Still, the technical achievements xAI claims for various Grok 4 models seem to stand out. The Arc Prize organization reported that Grok 4 Thinking (with simulated reasoning enabled) achieved a score of 15.9 percent on its ARC-AGI-2 test, which the organization says nearly doubles the previous commercial best and tops the current Kaggle competition leader.

“With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions,” Musk claimed during the livestream. We’ve previously covered nebulous claims about “PhD-level” AI, finding them to be generally specious marketing talk.

Premium pricing amid controversy

During Wednesday’s livestream, xAI also announced plans for an AI coding model in August, a multi-modal agent in September, and a video generation model in October. The company also plans to make Grok 4 available in Tesla vehicles next week, further expanding Musk’s AI assistant across his various companies.

Despite the recent turmoil, xAI has moved forward with an aggressive pricing strategy for “premium” versions of Grok. Alongside Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy, xAI launched “SuperGrok Heavy,” a $300-per-month subscription that makes it the most expensive AI service among major providers. Subscribers will get early access to Grok 4 Heavy and upcoming features.

Whether users will pay xAI’s premium pricing remains to be seen, particularly given the AI assistant’s tendency to periodically generate politically motivated outputs. These incidents represent fundamental management and implementation issues that, so far, no fancy-looking test-taking benchmarks have been able to capture.

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Linda Yaccarino quits X without saying why, one day after Grok praised Hitler

ad boycott, antisemitism, elon musk, grok, linda yaccarino, Policy, Twitter, X, x ad boycott / Kelly Newman / July 9, 2025

And “the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter” with xAI, Yaccarino said.

Grok cites “growing tensions” between Musk and CEO

It’s unclear how Yaccarino’s departure could influence X advertisers who may have had more confidence in the platform with her at the helm.

Eventually, Musk commented on Yaccarino’s announcement, thanking her for her contributions but saying little else about her departure. Separately, he responded to Thierry Breton, former European Union commissioner for the internal market, who joked that “Europe’s got talent” if Musk “needs help.” The X owner, who previously traded barbs with Breton over alleged X disinformation, responded “sure” with a laugh-cry emoji.

Musk has seemingly been busy putting out fires, as the Grok account finally issued a statement confirming that X was working to remove “inappropriate” posts.

“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the post explained, confirming that fixes go beyond simply changing Grok’s prompting.

But the statement illuminates one of the biggest problems with experimental chatbots that experts fear may play an increasingly significant role in spreading misinformation and hate speech. Once Grok’s outputs got seriously out of hand, it took “millions of users” flagging the problematic posts for X to “identify and update the model where training could be improved”—which X curiously claims was an example of the platform responding “quickly.”

If X expects that harmful Grok outputs reaching millions is what it will take to address emerging issues, X advertisers today are stuck wondering what content they could risk monetizing. Sticking with X could remain precarious at a time when the Federal Trade Commission has moved to block ad boycotts and Musk has updated X terms to force any ad customer arbitration into a chosen venue in Texas.

For Yaccarino, whose career took off based on her advertising savvy, leaving now could help her save face from any fallout from both the Grok controversy this week and the larger battle with advertisers—some of whom, she’s noted, she’s worked with “for decades.”

X did not respond to Ars’ request to comment on Yaccarino’s exit. If you ask Grok why Yaccarino left, the chatbot cites these possible reasons: “growing tensions” with Musk, frustrations with X brand safety, business struggles relegating her role to “chief apology officer,” and ad industry friends pushing her to get out while she can.

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X’s globe-trotting defense of ads on Nazi posts violates TOS, Media Matters says

ad boycott, content moderation, elon musk, hate speech, linda yaccarino, media matters, online advertising, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X, x ad boycott / Mike M. / March 12, 2025

Part of the problem appeared to be decreased spending from big brands that did return, like reportedly Apple. Other dips were linked to X’s decision to partner with adtech companies, splitting ad revenue with Magnite, Google, and PubMatic, Business Insider reported. The CEO of marketing consultancy Ebiquity, Ruben Schreurs, told Business Insider that most of the top 100 global advertisers he works with were still hesitant to invest in X, confirming “no signs of a mass return.”

For X, the ad boycott has tanked revenue for years, even putting X on the brink of bankruptcy, Musk claimed. The billionaire paid $44 billion for the platform, and at the end of 2024, Fidelity estimated that X was worth just $9.4 billion, CNN reported.

But at the start of 2025, analysts predicted that advertisers may return to X to garner political favor with Musk, who remains a senior advisor in the Trump administration. Perhaps more importantly in the short-term, sources also told Bloomberg that X could potentially raise as much as Musk paid—$44 billion—from investors willing to help X pay down its debt to support new payments and video products.

That could put a Band-Aid on X’s financial wounds as Yaccarino attempts to persuade major brands that X isn’t toxic (while X sues some of them) and Musk tries to turn the social media platform once known as Twitter into an “everything app” as ubiquitous in the US as WeChat in China.

MMFA alleges that its research, which shows how toxic X is today, has been stifled by Musk’s suits, but other groups have filled the gap. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has resumed its reporting since defeating X’s lawsuit last March, and, most recently, University of California, Berkeley, researchers conducted a February analysis showing that “hate speech on the social media platform X rose about 50 percent” in the eight months after Musk’s 2022 purchase, which suggests that advertisers had potentially good reason to be spooked by changes at X and that those changes continue to keep them at bay today.

“Musk has continually tried to blame others for this loss in revenue since his takeover,” MMFA’s complaint said, alleging that all three suits were filed to intimidate MMFA “for having dared to publish an article Musk did not like.”

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X CEO signals ad boycott is over. External data paints a different picture.

CES 2025, Donald Trump, elon musk, linda yaccarino, online advertising, Policy, Twitter, twitter ad boycott, X / 9u50fv / January 9, 2025

When X CEO Linda Yaccarino took the stage as a keynote speaker at CES 2025, she revealed that “90 percent of the advertisers” who boycotted X over brand safety concerns since Elon Musk’s 2022 Twitter acquisition “are back on X.”

Yaccarino did not go into any further detail to back up the data point, and X did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

But Yaccarino’s statistic seemed to bolster claims that X had made since Donald Trump’s re-election that advertisers were flocking back to the platform, with some outlets reporting that brands hoped to win Musk’s favor in light of his perceived influence over Trump by increasing spending on X.

However, it remains hard to gauge how impactful this seemingly significant number of advertisers returning will be in terms of spiking X’s value, which fell by as much as 72 percent after Musk’s Twitter takeover. And X’s internal data doesn’t seem to completely sync up with data from marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower, suggesting that more context may be needed to understand if X’s financial woes may potentially be easing up in 2025.

Before the presidential election, Sensor Tower previously told Ars that “72 out of the top 100 spending US advertisers” on Twitter/X from October 2022 had “ceased spending on the platform as of September 2024.” This was up from 50 advertisers who had stopped spending on Twitter/X in October 2023, about a year after Musk’s acquisition, suggesting that the boycott had seemingly only gotten worse.

Shortly after the election, AdWeek reported that big brands, including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment, had resumed advertising on X. But by the end of 2024, Sensor Tower told Ars that X still had seemingly not succeeded in wooing back many of pre-acquisition Twitter’s top spenders, making Yaccarino’s claim that “90 percent of advertisers are back on X” somewhat harder to understand.

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