Elon Musk is accusing Google of running 'insane racist, anti-civilizational programming' with its AI

“I’m glad that Google overplayed their hand with their AI image generation, as it made their insane racist, anti-civilizational programming clear to all,” Elon Musk wrote in an X post on Thursday. Bartosz Siedlik/AFP via Getty Images; Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

• Google paused Gemini’s image-generation feature after users claimed it was “woke.”
• “I’m glad that Google overplayed their hand with their AI image generation,” Elon Musk wrote on X.
• Google said on Thursday that it will “re-release an improved version” of Gemini soon.

Elon Musk isn’t playing nice with Google.

On Thursday, Google paused its chatbot Gemini’s image-generation feature, following backlash from some users who claimed the feature was “woke.” People on social media have said the AI consistently generated images of people of color in inaccurate historical contexts.

That night, Musk wrote multiple posts on X slamming Google.

“I’m glad that Google overplayed their hand with their AI image generation, as it made their insane racist, anti-civilizational programming clear to all,” Musk wrote in one of the posts.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Google said it was “aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image-generation depictions.” The company said Gemini is “missing the mark” and that the company is “working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately.”

In a subsequent statement on Thursday, Google said it “will re-release an improved version soon.”

Musk, notably, also has some skin in the AI game. X’s AI, Grok, is a conversational chatbot that’s trained on X posts, which Musk has vowed to make politically neutral.

The Tesla billionaire also went after Gemini’s product lead, Jack Krawczyk.

On Wednesday, Krawczyk said Gemini’s image generation capabilities were designed to “reflect our global user base.”

“This nut is a big part of why Google’s AI is so racist & sexist,” Musk wrote on X on Thursday. Krawczyk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular hours.

Earlier on Thursday, Musk wrote on X that he ran a Google search on his phone and discovered that the “top two choices are pro censorship.”

BI ran two separate searches on Google with the same keywords Musk used. On both regular and incognito searches, the top results were, in this order: “why censorship is important,” “why censorship should not be allowed,” and “why censorship in schools is good.”

This isn’t the first time Musk has ripped companies for embracing what he claims are flawed corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Musk has also criticized other AI firms, like Sam Altman’s OpenAI, in favor of X’s AI, Grok.

Representatives for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

February 23, 3:48 p.m. SGT: This story has been updated.