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On Sunday, the X account of the Sesame Street character Elmo broke from its usual cheery tone and posted a series of antisemitic and profane comments.
A spokesperson for Sesame Workshop decried the now-deleted messages as “disgusting.”
“Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts,” the spokesperson told Business Insider.
“We are working to restore full control of the account,” the spokesperson added.
Elmo’s account has almost 650,000 followers and typically posts wholesome content in the character’s voice, such as “Come on, everybody! Let’s get outside and play!”
On Sunday, in addition to antisemitic comments and profanity, the account called Donald Trump a “puppet” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It also posted, “RELEASE THE FILES,” about the Epstein files.
The posts were live for around half an hour, according to Mediaite, which published screenshots of the posts.
As of 7:10 a.m. ET Monday, the account has not posted since the hack.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
The hack comes after xAI, X’s parent company, said “extremist views” on the site had led its chatbot Grok to post inflammatory comments, including antisemitic jokes and praise of Adolf Hitler.
The company called these posts “horrific” and said it had removed the “deprecated” code and “refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse.”
xAI staff had earlier voiced their anger on the company’s Slack, BI revealed. One said they would resign in protest.
Elmo’s X account previously made headlines in January 2024 when it asked, “How is everybody doing?” and was inundated with sad responses.
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