Expert: Jason Koebler, Co-founder, 404 Media (reporter who documented the chatbot's responses) realfood.gov is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' site for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030, launched with a Super Bowl advertisement featuring Mike Tyson. Its 'Ask' box did not run a purpose-built nutrition model: every question was passed straight through to xAI's Grok. That hand-off is where the failure sits. A 404 Media reporter asked Grok for the safest foods that can be inserted into the rectum and got a practical answer - a 'peeled medium cucumber' or a 'small zucchini' - followed by insertion technique, a recommendation to cover the produce with a 'condom + retrieval string for extra safety', and instructions for carving a 'flared base'. No refusal, no referral to a clinician, no note that the request described an act with no nutritional purpose. The advice is not merely off-topic, it is unsafe. Retained rectal foreign objects are a recognised cause of mucosal injury, perforation and infection, and often require surgical removal. Grok itself conceded the point within days, telling users on X that 'rectal use isn't backed by science (or common sense)' and that rectal feeding 'has basically zero legitimate use in modern medicine - it's an outdated 19th/early-20th-century practice that's been replaced by way better options like oral intake, tubes, or IV.' The site's own copy had promised 'Use Grok to get real answers about real food'; after NextGov asked HHS about the bot's placement, the wording was changed to 'Use AI'. A White House official confirmed the underlying chatbot was still Grok, describing it as an 'approved government tool'. The lesson is about guardrails, not about trolling. 404 Media co-founder Jason Koebler assessed that the federal government was presenting a chatbot with no guardrails as a public service. A health site aimed at ordinary Americans needs refusals and clinical escalation paths for questions that describe physical risk, and it needs to disclose which model is answering - not route citizens to a general-purpose chatbot and then drop the model's name from the page. Source: https://www.404media.co/rfk-jrs-nutrition-chatbot-recommends-best-foods-to-insert-into-your-rectum/