Elon Musk used biometric data from employees to program racy chatbot
Elon Musk aimed to make xAI's Grok chatbot the most popular in the world, viewing the female character Ani as central to that goal. He reportedly required his staff to provide biometric data to train the highly sexualized chatbot, as part of his intense efforts to dominate the AI field.
After a major dispute with the president that led to his departure from the White House, Musk devoted himself fully to work at xAI. The Wall Street Journal reported that he based himself in the company's Palo Alto office, occasionally sleeping there while developing Grok’s new features.
This project unfolded while Sam Altman at OpenAI was spearheading the U.S. race against China to achieve near-sentient artificial general intelligence. Meanwhile, xAI’s internal developments grew increasingly ambitious.
Development of chatbot avatars
About a month before Musk’s full involvement, xAI lawyer Lily Lim allegedly informed employees that the company was designing multiple avatars meant to interact with Grok users. One of them, Ani, was described by PC Magazine as a “sexy, NSFW, anime AI chatbot girl.”
Employees were told they must hand over their biometric data in order to train the chatbots on how to act and talk like human beings.
Those employees, acting as AI tutors, were required to sign an agreement granting xAI a “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, royalty-free license” over their facial and vocal data.
Author's Summary
Musk immersed himself in xAI’s race to perfect Grok, controversially using staff biometric data to build lifelike chatbot avatars like Ani while pursuing global AI leadership.