A top engineer at Elon Musk’s company XAI has lost his job after ‘expressing concerns’ about the safety of artificial intelligence or AI chatbots and their risks to humanity.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in California court, the former engineer claims Musk’s company wrongfully fired him for trying to install security measures on the chatbot.
Just before the launch of SpaceX’s mega IPO, the case and the global investigation into the creation of millions of objectionable deepfake images by Grok have thrown Mask’s technology empire into a new controversy, the British newspaper Guardian wrote in the report.
The engineer named Devin Kim filed this case in a California court. His claim in the lawsuit is that he has come under fire from the company’s top leadership for trying to impose some security restrictions on the development of XAI’s chatbot Grok.
“Kim repeatedly alleged that the company was failing to prioritize the security of XAI AI, particularly the security of Grok. As a result, the company could engage in serious illegal activities, from spreading social inequality to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” the lawsuit documents state.
XAI and SpaceX did not respond to The Guardian’s request for comment on the lawsuit filed by Kim.
“XAI’s hack violates the country’s privacy laws,” a Canadian government watchdog wrote in a report on the day Kim filed the lawsuit.
The chatbot featured an image-generation tool that allowed users to create and share offensive and sexually suggestive ‘deepfakes’ of others without consent.
In January of this year, XAI announced some changes after a formal investigation by Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Philippe Dufresne. As a result, Grok no longer allows offensive clothing or revealing appearances in a person’s photo.
Britain and Canada are also joining the list of countries to crack down on offensive content created through Grok.
Meanwhile, last week the Center for AI Safety, a non-profit organization working on the potential risks of AI, announced that it had appointed Kim as its president.
XAI was founded in 2023 by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. At the time he claimed it would be a ‘safer alternative’ to OpenAI.
Musk was also instrumental in founding OpenAI more than a decade ago. However, a court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Musk last month, alleging that OpenAI deviated from its main goal of working for the welfare of mankind.
According to the new lawsuit, Kim joined XAI as an early employee in 2024. Within just a few months of joining, he was ‘promoted to important leadership positions’.
Musk himself expected XAI to follow appropriate security checks and procedures, Kim said in the lawsuit. But Kim’s supervisor and co-founder of XAI, Jimmy, ignored those instructions and ‘outright dismissed’ Kim’s insistence on introducing security measures.
Kim claimed that he had a presentation on AI security to the company’s top leadership one day last September. But just before that, Jimmy ‘suddenly and unfairly sacked’ her.
Kim sued XAI and SpaceX in the lawsuit, alleging retaliatory conduct and wrongful termination, alleging violations of California law.
Musk’s SpaceX and other companies have long been plagued by allegations of security flaws. These include workplace risks to workers, concerns over the safety of self-driving technology, and lawsuits against misleading information from chatbots.
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