Is safety ‘dead’ at xAI?

Elon Musk is “actively” working to make xAI’s Grok chatbot “more unhinged,” according to a former employee who spoke to The Verge about recent departures from Musk’s AI company.

This week, following the announcement that Musk’s SpaceX is acquiring xAI (which previously acquired his social media company X), at least 11 engineers and two co-founders said they’re leaving the company. Some said they’re departing to start something new, and Musk himself suggested this is part of an effort to organize xAI more effectively.

But two sources who left the company (at least one of them before the current wave) reportedly told The Verge that employees have become increasingly disillusioned by the company’s disregard for safety, resulting in global scrutiny after Grok was used to create more than 1 million sexualized images, including deepfakes of real women and minors.

One source said, “Safety is a dead org at xAI,” while the other said that Musk is “actively trying to make the model more unhinged because safety means censorship, in a sense, to him.”

They also reportedly complained about a lack of direction, with one saying they felt xAI was “stuck in the catch-up phase” compared to competitors.