OpenAI and Anthropic researchers criticized xAI safety
Researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic and other organizations publicly criticized the safety culture at Elon Musk’s xAI company. Calling it “reckless” and “completely irresponsible”.
The wave of criticism followed a series of scandals related to the Grok chatbot. First it issued anti-Semitic comments and called itself “MechaHitler”. Then xAI launched a more powerful Grok 4 model, which turned out to use Elon Musk’s personal political views when answering controversial questions. In the latest case, the company released companions in the form of a sexualized anime girl and an aggressive panda.
Boaz Barak, a Harvard computer science professor working on safety research at OpenAI, particularly criticizes xAI’s decision not to publish system cards. Industry-standard reports on training methods and safety assessments.
Samuel Marks, an AI safety researcher from Anthropic, also criticized the absence of a safety report. Calling this step “reckless”. According to him, while OpenAI’s, Anthropic’s and Google’s practices have their own problems, these companies at least assess safety before deployment and document results.
It’s unknown what exactly xAI did for testing Grok 4. According to an anonymous researcher, this model has no meaningful safety restrictions. And these words could mean anything.