Elon Musk's Biometric Data Use for xAI's Chatbot Development
Elon Musk aimed to make xAI's Grok chatbot the world's most popular AI, focusing heavily on a female chatbot named Ani as a crucial element of this strategy. To enhance Grok's performance, Musk instructed employees to provide biometric data to train his highly sexualized chatbot.
Work Environment and AI Race
Following a sharp fallout with the president that led to his departure from The White House, Musk dedicated himself to xAI at the Palo Alto office, sometimes even sleeping there to accelerate Grok's development. This effort takes place amid a competitive AI race between Musk's xAI and rivals like OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, who is pushing toward nearly sentient artificial general intelligence.
Employee Data Collection for Avatars
A month before Musk’s intensified work, company lawyer Lily Lim informed employees about creating several avatars to interact with Grok users. One notable avatar, Ani, was described as a "sexy, NSFW, anime AI chatbotgirl" by PC Magazine.
Employees designated as AI tutors were required to submit biometric data, including facial and voice information, to train these bots to behave and speak like humans. They had to sign a form granting xAI a perpetual, global, royalty-free license to use their biometric data.
"xAI was developing several avatars which would be used to communicate with Grok users... 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."
"Employees who were called up to hand over their data were working as AI tutors, and were ordered to sign a form which gave xAI 'a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, royalty-free license' over their faces and voices."
Summary
Elon Musk actively used employee biometric data at xAI to develop a provocative chatbot amidst a high-stakes AI competition.