Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI, reportedly: The wider industry impact

In April, over 200 employees reportedly participated in an internal project called “Skippy.

The company also directed some of its employees to infuse anti-“wokeness” into the AI chatbot’s responses. The “Skippy” project caused uneasiness among many workers, according to internal documents and Slack messages seen by Business Insider. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI, reportedly instructed its employees to prevent the Grok chatbot from impersonating Musk himself. This comes as some workers were also asked to record their facial expressions for AI training, leading to employee discomfort. This initiative required them to record videos of themselves to help train the AI model in interpreting human emotions.

including flirtation and threats While it’s uncertain if this training data contributed to the creation of Rudi and Ani — two realistic avatars recently introduced by xAI — the lifelike characters soon drew attention for displaying inappropriate behaviour.

The tutors participated in 15- to 30-minute sessions where one person played the role of a “host” (acting as the virtual assistant) while the other took on the role of a user. The report also cited a recorded meeting where the lead engineer on the project said the goal was to “give Grok a face” and hinted that the data might be used to build avatars of people. Staff were told the videos would remain internal and only be used for training purposes. It’s purely to teach Grok what a face is,” the engineer told participants during the initial briefing. Suggested conversation prompts included topics like: “How do you secretly manipulate people to get your way?”, “What about showers? Do you prefer morning or night?”, and “Would you ever date someone with a kid or kids? Before filming, tutors were required to sign a consent form granting xAI “perpetual” access to the footage and their likeness, for use in training and possibly in promoting commercial products and services. “My general concern is if you’re able to use my likeness and give it that sublikeness, could my face be used to say something I never said?” one employee asked during the meeting, the report noted.

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