Grok, Elon Musk and AI
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On Wednesday, Elon Musk discussed a new male AI “companion” that his company xAI is developing, which will run on the company’s unhinged chatbot software Grok. And while it’s not yet clear when this new robot buddy will be released, it sounds an awful lot like Musk is trying to make a romanticized version of himself.
At launch, Grok AI’s Companions will be available to SuperGrok subscribers ($30 per month), who need to enable the feature from the app's settings. This is just a “soft launch,” and enabling the feature will get much easier in a few days, said xAI owner Elon Musk on Monday.
Earlier this week, xAI added what can only be described as an AI anime girlfriend named Ani to its Grok chatbot. Which is how I ended up on a virtual starry beach as an AI waifu avatar tried to give me a “spicy” kiss.
xAI recently secured $10 billion, split evenly between a $5 billion equity raise and a $5 billion debt package arranged by Morgan Stanley. That round took its meteoric valuation to $113 billion, thanks in part to a $2 billion boost from SpaceX. Now, talks suggest a new raise that could take its value to between $170 billion and $200 billion.
This is the smartest AI in the world,” Musk said. He did not mention the chatbot’s viral posts praising Hitler and calling itself “MechaHitler.”
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SpaceX has agreed to invest $2 billion in Elon Musk 's artificial intelligence company xAI. The investment makes up nearly half of the company's recent $5 billion equity round, according to investors cited by The Wall Street Journal.
AI safety researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and nonprofit organizations are speaking out publicly against the “reckless” and “completely irresponsible” safety culture at xAI, the billion-dollar AI startup owned by Elon Musk. The criticisms follow weeks of scandals at xAI that have overshadowed the company’s technological advances.