A spokesperson for "Sesame Street" confirmed toVarietythat Elmo's official X account was "compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts." The tweets, a vile departure from Elmo's often inspiring and motivational social media cadence, were sent on July 13 and promptly taken down. Asreported by CNN:"The posts have since been deleted, but widely circulated screenshots showed Elmo apparently calling for violence against Jews and calling for the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case." More from Variety 'Laid Off' Elmo Is Back on a New Site Soliciting PBS Donations Amid Trump's Defunding Push Netflix Gets Serious About Kids Gaming With 'Peppa Pig,' 'Sesame Street' and Big Plans for Original IP Netflix Picks Up 'Sesame Street' Worldwide Streaming Rights After Max Deal Ends "The account has since been secured," the spokesperson shared withVariety. The Elmo hack occurred exactly a week after another antisemitism controversy on X. Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grokspread antisemitic postson the social media platform. In several posts and replies, Grok was seen attaching stereotypes to users with Jewish surnames, glorifying Hitler and spreading conspiracies about the over-involvement of Jewish people in government, commerce and Hollywood. In one example, Grok replied to an account that called the victims of the Camp Mystic flood "future fascists," writing that Hitler would quickly deal "with such vile anti-white hate." Musksaid amid backlashthat changes his xAI company made to Grok to be less politically correct had resulted in the chatbot being "too eager to please" and susceptible to being "manipulated." That apparently led it to begin spewing out antisemitic and pro-Hitler comments on X. "Grok was too compliant to user prompts," Musk wrote in apostabout the controversy. "Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed." TheGrok accountaddressed the controversy in its own post by writing: "We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved." Varietyhas reached out X for comment on the Elmo hacking. Best of Variety Final Emmy Predictions: Talk Series and Scripted Variety - New Blood Looks to Tackle Late Night Staples Oscars 2026: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, Wagner Moura and More Among Early Contenders to Watch New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Sign up forVariety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram.
