Elon Musk's Use of Biometric Data for xAI's Grok Chatbot
Elon Musk aimed to make xAI's Grok chatbot the most popular worldwide, focusing on a female chatbot named Ani as the cornerstone of his strategy. To achieve this, Musk instructed his staff to provide biometric data to help train the highly sexualized AI assistant.
Work Intensity and AI Competition
Following a major fallout with the president that led to his departure from the White House, Musk dedicated himself fully to developing Grok’s capabilities at xAI. He set up base at the Palo Alto xAI office and often worked around the clock, sometimes even sleeping there, in an effort to advance quickly in the AI space.
This effort is part of a broader digital arms race between the US and China in AI development, with Sam Altman of OpenAI leading the US side toward creating an advanced "artificial general intelligence."
Development of Avatars and Employee Biometric Data
A month before Musk’s intensified focus on Grok, xAI’s lawyer Lily Lim informed employees that multiple avatars were being created to interact with Grok users. Ani, characterized by PC Magazine as a "sexy, NSFW, anime AI chatbotgirl," was a key avatar.
Employees working as AI tutors were instructed to submit biometric data, including their faces and voices, to train these avatars to behave and converse like humans. They were required to sign a form granting xAI a
“perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, royalty-free license”to use their biometric features.
Summary
Elon Musk’s intensive efforts to advance xAI’s Grok chatbot included using employee biometric data to create a provocative AI avatar, reflecting the high-stakes global race in artificial intelligence technology.
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