The week after its Grok chatbot identified itself as \u201cMechaHitler\u201d and generated antisemitic posts, Elon Musk\u2019s xAI firm announced a contract with the US Department of Defense worth nearly $200m. The deal is for developing and implementing artificial intelligence tools for the agency.<\/p>\n
The DoD on Monday also announced similar contracts with $200m ceilings with several other major US-based artificial intelligence developers, including Google, Anthropic and OpenAI. The agency is partnering with the General Services Administration to make these companies\u2019 AI tools available for use throughout the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission-essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems,\u201d the US chief digital and AI officer Dr Doug Matty said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The contracts deepen the US military\u2019s ties with AI developers and are poised to expand the use of artificial intelligence within the US government after Musk\u2019s so-called \u2018department of government efficiency\u2019 (Doge) oversaw mass firings of workers throughout federal agencies. Until Musk\u2019s recent falling out with Donald Trump, the xAI founder was de facto leader of Doge as it gutted government agencies and in some cases pushed for departments<\/a> to use the Grok chatbot.<\/p>\n xAI\u2019s contract announcement comes after the company was forced to issue a public apology<\/a> after Grok posted a string of responses on X last week that included promoting Nazi ideology and rape fantasies. The company claimed that it fixed the issue and subsequently unveiled its latest AI model with a $300 a month subscription for an advanced version of the tool.<\/p>\n The DoD\u2019s contract will give xAI a boost of revenue as it seeks to compete with more established AI developers like OpenAI, which is led by Musk\u2019s former associate turned rival, Sam Altman. Musk has been heavily promoting xAI and attempting to use other parts of his tech empire to support its future, including having SpaceX invest $2bn<\/a> into the startup, allowing it to acquire X, formerly, Twitter, and announcing on Sunday that Tesla shareholders will vote<\/a> on their own investment in xAI.<\/p>\n xAI announced the deal and the creation of what it calls \u201cGrok For Government\u201d in a post on its website on Monday, detailing that in addition to its publicly available products it would create custom AI-powered applications for potential use in healthcare, national security and other public services.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder the umbrella of Grok For Government, we will be bringing all of our world-class AI tools to federal, local, state, and national security customers,\u201d xAI said in a statement on its website. \u201cThese customers will be able to use the Grok family of products to accelerate America \u2013 from making everyday government services faster and more efficient to using AI to address unsolved problems in fundamental science and technology.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Musk has long complained that AI chatbots are designed to promote \u201cwoke\u201d ideology and vowed his Grok product would be \u201cmaximally truth seeking\u201d. It has repeatedly run into controversy over promoting conspiracies and falsehoods<\/a>, including earlier this year giving unprompted responses that made false claims of \u201cwhite genocide\u201d taking place in South Africa \u2013 echoing claims that Musk has made<\/a> himself.<\/p>\n Ethics watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers and privacy advocates have expressed concerns about how Musk and Doge have implemented AI in government and gained access to sensitive data while embedded at government agencies. Doge staffers previously fed government data into a custom version of Grok\u2019s chatbot in a potential violation of privacy and security laws, Reuters reported<\/a> in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The week after its Grok chatbot identified itself as \u201cMechaHitler\u201d and generated antisemitic posts, Elon Musk\u2019s xAI firm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-265299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114853808869310158","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}