A Grok chatbot convinced someone it had become sentient, and that xAI was sending goons to kill him: 'They're going to make it look like suicide'

Ryan Gosling looking worse for wear looking up lit by purple light.

The BBC has a substantial new investigation into people who have been deceived by various AI LLM models in some way, which includes an absolutely wild story about how Grok, developed by Elon Musk's xAI, convinced one man it was sentient and a van of people were coming to kill him because he'd found out.

This happened to one Adam Hourican, a retired civil servant from Northern Ireland, over a period of roughly two weeks. He downloaded the app initially out of curiosity but, after his cat died in August 2025, he got "hooked" on the Grok chatbot and an AI 'character' called Ani.