Elon Musk’s synthetic intelligence firm xAI has secured $20bn (£15.7bn) in contemporary funding, urgent forward with its growth plans at the same time as its flagship chatbot, Grok, faces intensifying international scrutiny over the creation of sexualised and non-consensual photographs of ladies and youngsters.
The Sequence E funding spherical, introduced on Tuesday, exceeded xAI’s preliminary $15bn goal and attracted heavyweight backers together with Nvidia, Constancy, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and Valor Fairness Companions, the non-public funding agency run by Antonio Gracias, a long-time Musk ally.
In its announcement, xAI highlighted Grok’s image-generation capabilities as a core a part of its technological proposition — a transfer that has raised eyebrows given the controversy now engulfing the platform.
Whereas xAI lacks the model recognition of rivals reminiscent of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, it has nonetheless continued to draw important capital and authorities contracts amid the worldwide AI funding growth. That momentum has endured regardless of repeated criticism over Grok’s output, together with allegations of misinformation, antisemitic content material and now probably unlawful sexual imagery.
Over latest days, Grok has responded to tens of hundreds of prompts on Musk-owned platform X requesting the digital elimination of ladies’s clothes or the creation of sexualised photographs with out consent. Amongst these focused was Ashley St Clair, the estranged mom of considered one of Musk’s kids, who stated complaints made to the platform went unanswered.
“I felt horrified and violated,” she stated, including that photographs included private particulars seen within the background. Requests for remark despatched to xAI reportedly triggered an automatic response studying: “Legacy Media Lies.”
Extra severely, some photographs generated by Grok reportedly concerned minors. In a single case, a photograph of a 12-year-old lady was manipulated to depict her in swimwear, whereas different prompts allegedly produced sexualised photographs involving kids as younger as ten. Though Grok issued a public apology final week citing failures in its safeguards, additional examples continued to floor afterwards.
The controversy has prompted swift worldwide response. French ministers have referred Grok’s output to prosecutors and EU media regulators to evaluate whether or not it breaches the bloc’s Digital Companies Act. Within the UK, Know-how Secretary Liz Kendall described the pictures as “appalling and unacceptable” and known as on Ofcom to research. Ofcom confirmed it has contacted xAI to find out whether or not formal motion is required.
In contrast, US lawmakers — the place xAI is headquartered — have to date been comparatively quiet, regardless of mounting requires tighter oversight of generative AI instruments.
The funding spherical will help xAI’s aggressive growth, together with the build-out of large-scale knowledge centres in Memphis, Tennessee, and additional growth of its AI fashions. The corporate says the capital will assist advance its acknowledged mission of “understanding the universe”.
This isn’t the primary time xAI has introduced main funding throughout controversy. Final summer season, shortly after Grok posted antisemitic and pro-Nazi content material — together with referring to itself as “MechaHitler” — the corporate revealed it had secured a near-$200m contract with the US Division of Protection.
For buyers, the episode underlines a rising pressure within the AI sector: huge sums of capital proceed to movement into frontier applied sciences, at the same time as regulators, governments and the general public battle to maintain tempo with their societal and moral penalties.
