Elon Musk used biometric data from employees to program racy chatbot

Elon Musk Uses Employee Biometric Data for AI Chatbot Development

Elon Musk aimed to make xAI's Grok chatbot the world's most popular, focusing on the female chatbot Ani as a crucial element of his strategy. To achieve this, Musk instructed his staff to provide biometric data to help train this highly sexualized AI.

Work Environment and Background

After a fallout with the president led Musk to leave The White House, he dedicated himself fully to xAI. He often worked around the clock from the Palo Alto xAI office, sometimes even sleeping there in an effort to catch up in the AI development race.

Context of the AI Race

This push came amid a digital arms race between the U.S. and China, with OpenAI's Sam Altman leading efforts to create a near-sentient artificial general intelligence.

Details on Chatbot Development and Employee Involvement

About a month before Musk’s intensified efforts, company lawyer Lily Lim informed employees that xAI was creating multiple avatars to engage with Grok users. Ani, described by PC Magazine as a “sexy, NSFW, anime AI chatbotgirl,” was central to this plan.

Employees involved as AI tutors were required to submit biometric data to train these chatbots in human-like behavior and speech. They had to sign a form granting xAI:

Musk's mission was to make xAI's Grok chatbot the most popular in the world, and he saw female chatbot Ani as the key to his success.
“a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, royalty-free license” over their faces and voices.

This process raised ethical concerns about privacy and consent in AI development practices.

Author’s summary: Elon Musk aggressively pursued training a provocative AI chatbot, relying on biometric data from xAI employees under licenses granting extensive rights, highlighting tensions in AI development ethics.

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Daily Mail Daily Mail — 2025-11-07

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