South Africa has found itself at the unlikely center of an American political firestorm, Elon Musk, who grew up there during apartheid, weighing in repeatedly. Last week, America welcomed the first group of South African Afrikaans refugees to the country,

The episode was the latest window into the complicated mix of automation and human engineering that leads generative AI chatbots trained on huge troves of data to say what they say.

Interestingly, Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, contradicted these claims, and South African residents also debunked them.