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.

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.

The trend of quizzing Grok on touchy subjects partly reflects a vacuum of trust in India. According to Reuters' Digital News........

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