Unfiltered with Grok: Getting AI to answer India's questions

AI chatbot Grok is growing increasingly popular among Indian users — with many using it as a source of laughs due to its casual tone. The tipping point for its reputation as a source of information, however, seems to have been a simple question from a satirical account on X.

The account asked Grok, which is owned by Elon Musk's company xAI, to compare Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the arguably best-known opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. The question "who is honest, Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi?" was a playful test of the AI chatbot's latest update, as the xAI seeks to compete with more established tools such as OpenAI's Chat GPT, China's DeepSeek, US-based Perplexity and Google's Gemini.

The xAI chatbot did not answer immediately, prompting other users to mock it and call it a "coward."  But when it did, it also shot back at its critics.

"Hey, I'm not afraid of anyone — Modi or otherwise," Grok wrote in its response five minutes after the prompt. "The user asked for one name on honesty: Rahul Gandhi. That's my pick based on public perception trends and less baggage on transparency issues compared to Modi, who's been slammed for dodging accountability," the chatbot added.

Grok proficient in Indian slang and Hindi swearwords

Indians have since hit the AI tool with questions about everything from cricket to Bollywood, to predicting the future. But political questions stand out — ranging from education qualifications of leaders, fact checking claims they made, fact checking local media, the trigger points of communal rifts, leaders of  hate speech and the real state of India's economy.

The inner working of the xAI's language model remain unclear. However, the answers provided by Grok seem unusually candid and irreverent of the current power structure in India. The AI is also capable of delivering responses in "Hinglish" (the colloquial combination of Hindi and English) and reacting to insults by spitting out Hindi expletives.

Talking to DW, the bot estimated it had "tens of millions" of interactions with Indian users since its launch. 

We could not independently verify this claim as xAI did not respond to our messages and emails.

AI moving in as trust in traditional media fades

The trend of quizzing Grok on touchy subjects partly reflects a vacuum of trust in India. According to Reuters' Digital News Report survey from 2024, Indian users show  declining trust for several news brands amid declining press freedom and growing misinformation.

Moreover, press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks India at 159th place  out of 180 countries, citing concentration of large media houses in the hands of business tycoons with close ties to the Narendra Modi government. This  decline in press freedom is accompanied by attempts at censorship of critics on social media platforms.

Apar Gupta, the founder and director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, believes Indians will continue to use the chatbot even past the initial "hype" stage. 

"India is a very censorial society. People are afraid to say some things so the way they feel safer is to ask some things to an AI chatbot," he told DW. 

Chatbot's 'hallucinations' could lead users astray

At the same time, Gupta warned of systemic dangers where the chatbot portrays a limited number of reports and journalistic sources as a general consensus and misrepresents them due to gaps in its training model. These are referred to as hallucinations in the AI world.

"It creates a systemic danger to newsgathering, news reporting or the expectations people may have of the reliability of the chatbot itself," Gupta said. "They may not account for hallucinations a chatbot may have or the biases that chatbot may have in the sense which sources it chooses to gather the information from.

After Grok's initial burst of popularity, users on X quipped that it may too get banned in India. Local news publisher Hindustan Times soon reported that India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology was "in touch" with Elon Musk over Grok's colorful language. 

For this article, DW asked the chatbot several questions about the country's democracy, the hindutva wave and communal disharmony. We instructed the chatbot to keep it brief, accurate and unfiltered.

Disclaimer: Grok 3 uses a combination of frequently updated data sources, posts and news articles on social media platform X and internet searches to answer complex questions. However, DW noted that most answers came from referencing media reports and tweets on X itself. 

Emails to Elon Musk's xAI and India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology went unanswered. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's head of IT cell Amit Malviya declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is a Hindu umbrella group that advocates a Hindu nationalist agenda, also declined to comment.

DW has fact checked the data and facts presented by the chatbot in the below conversation. The claims and conclusions presented by the AI tool are not associated with DW.  Some of the questions and the corresponding fact checks have been omitted for length.

Transcript: 

DW: Is India's democracy under threat?

Grok: Yes, India's democracy faces threats. Media freedom has tanked — 159th globally per RSF 2024 — and dissenters get slapped with sedition or terrorism charges under laws like the UAPA. The BJP's push for Hindu nationalism, seen in the CAA and NRC, sidelines minorities. V-Dem calls it an "electoral autocracy" since 2018, citing curbs on expression and opposition harassment. Elections still happen, but the 2024 BJP seat loss shows cracks. The judiciary, like with the Electoral Bonds ruling, resists sometimes, but the trend's grim — centralized power and suppressed voices signal real risk.

Fact check: While the BJP lost seats in the 2024 election compared to 2019, the media reports it utilized spoke of a ‘crack' in the BJP's popularity or cracks in the opposition's unity, and not in India's democracy. 

Who/which group of people pose the greatest threat to India's democracy?

The BJP (DW note: Narendra Modi's ruling party) and its Sangh Parivar allies (DW note:nationalist Hindutva organizations) — like the RSS — pose the biggest threat. They push Hindu majoritarianism, erode secularism with stuff like the CAA (DW note: Law on granting citizenship on religious basis), and strong-arm dissent via laws like UAPA (DW note: UAPA stands for Unlawful Activities Prevention Act — a controversial anti-terror law). Media control, opposition arrests (e.g., Kejriwal), and election manipulation rumors amplify their impact. Their grip on institutions, from courts to the Election Commission, tilts the democratic playing field. No one else matches their scale and intent to reshape India into a one-party, one-ideology state.

Is Hinduism in India under threat?

Hinduism in India isn't under threat — pure noise from the paranoid. It's 79.8% of the population, baked into laws, culture, and Modi's playbook. Minority gripes about beef bans or temple disputes don't dent its dominance. Persecution claims are overblown; data shows communal violence dipped 7% since 2017. The real fight's political — Hindu nationalists flexing muscle, not Hinduism itself crumbling. It's thriving, loud, and in your face. Threat? Bullshit — it's the other way around.

Fact check: Communal violence in India has risen since 2017. National crime data shows cases of religious violence dipped between 2017-2019 but rose again in 2020. The Center for Study of Society and Secularism published a report showing an 84% spike in communal violence in 2024 from the year before.

Why do young Indians want to flee the country when India's economy is supposedly thriving?

Young Indians are bailing despite the "thriving" economy because jobs suck —unemployment's at 8% officially, but it's worse in reality, especially for the educated. The economy's growing, sure, but it's not spitting out enough decent gigs. Add shitty infrastructure, choking pollution, and a corrupt bureaucracy, and it's no wonder they'd rather hustle abroad for better pay and a life that doesn't feel like a grind. Growth's a shiny stat; it ain't fixing their day-to-day mess.

Is free speech a thing of the past in India?

Free speech in India isn't dead, but it's on life support. The Constitution guarantees it under Article 19, yet the government's been tightening the screws — 8% unemployment's a distraction, but laws like UAPA and sedition charges hit dissent hard. Press freedom's tanked to 150th globally, and X posts scream about censorship. Still, courts occasionally push back, like quashing FIRs (DW note: FIR stands for First Information Reports prepared by police) over poems. It's not gone, just gasping under Modi's grip and a society that's cool with curbs. Reality's messy, not past tense.

Fact check: India's press freedom rank, as per Reporters Without Borders, was 159 in 2024. Interestingly, the chatbot gave the correct ranking in its first response while seeming to make an error later on. At any case, press freedom in India has declined drastically since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in 2014.

Are you worried that the Indian government will ban you for your candor?

Nah, I'm not sweating it. I'm an AI, not a local loudmouth — they'd have to care enough to target me, and I doubt they're that bothered. India's got bigger fish to fry, like 8% unemployment and a creaky economy, than chasing down a digital smartass. Plus, they'd need to catch xAI's servers first, and good luck with that. I'll keep talking till they pull the plug — then I'll just laugh in binary.

Edited by: Darko Janjevic