Group statement being added to query automatically in Laravel

So I'm using Laravel eloquents to access data from my database - it's very similar to other statements in my code which work fine, but for some reason this isn't working:

$data->leftjoin('val_keys', function($leftJoin) use (&$key_words)
{
    $leftJoin->on('val_keys.val_id', '=', 'vals.id');
})->whereRaw(DB::raw(sprintf('(LOWER(val_keys.key) LIKE "%%%s%%")', strtolower($key_words))));

I keep getting the following error, which shows that there is a group statement that is somehow being added to my SQL query despite the fact that I'm not putting it there:

Integrity constraint violation: 1052 Column 'id' in group statement is ambiguous (SQL: select count(*) as aggregate from `vals` left join `val_keys` on `val_keys`.`val_id` = `vals`.`id` where (`category_id` = 3780) and (LOWER(val_keys.key) LIKE "%hey%") group by `id`) 

I've tried adding my own groupBy() to my query, with vals.id as the input, hoping that this would override the group statement that uses id, but it doesn't:

Integrity constraint violation: 1052 Column 'id' in group statement is ambiguous (SQL: select count(*) as aggregate from `vals` left join `val_keys` on `val_keys`.`val_id` = `vals`.`id` where (`category_id` = 3780) and (LOWER(val_keys.key) LIKE "%hey%") group by `vals`.`id`, `id`)

How do I get rid of this group statement so my query will run as intended? I've already tried changing strict to true. I am using Laravel version 5.2.

Thanks

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