64 Million Users Aren’t Enough: Musk Shut Himself Away at xAI for the Summer and Plans to Conquer the World

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI owes its fame not only to excellent benchmark results, but also to the controversies surrounding it. Musk therefore spent the entire summer at his xAI company in Palo Alto, trying to take it to a new level. This shows that he takes the race for first place in the world of artificial intelligence very seriously.

Trying to Surpass GPT

Elon Musk founded xAI in the spring of 2023 with experts who had previously worked for Google DeepMind, OpenAI, or Musk’s Tesla. Initially, a total of 11 people were in charge, and the goal was clear—to create a chatbot that would not only achieve excellent benchmark results, but would also not be as “ideologically liberal” as ChatGPT.

The construction of the data center cost billions of dollars, and the development of the Grok chatbot was progressing very well. Elon Musk decided to hire 100 developers in 100 days, and by February 2025, the chatbot had become one of the best in artificial intelligence.

However, the first problems arose in May of that year, when Musk still considered Grok too woke, and one of the developers modified its code. This resulted in a controversy in which the chatbot spoke about the “white genocide” in South Africa, even though it had not been asked about anything of the sort.

Grok, despite its difficulties, became a popular chatbot with more than 60 million monthly users; however, it did not threaten the position of ChatGPT, which is visited by around 700 million users per week. It was the strong competition and problems with some of the chatbot’s statements that led Elon Musk to devote himself fully to xAI throughout the summer and take it to an entirely new level in the field of artificial intelligence.

Company Reorganization and a Shift Away from Science

According to employee accounts obtained by The New York Times, Elon Musk doubled his efforts over the summer, devoted the vast majority of his time to xAI, and even slept at the office.

In addition to stepping up his efforts, however, he also began a chaotic reorganization of the entire company and fired a number of research experts. Other experts also followed them out of the company of their own accord because they did not identify with xAI’s new form. According to some of them, xAI’s new direction has completely shifted away from science and research (which should be the primary objective when developing AI) and is instead targeting a mass audience.

SuperGrok Heavy and Further Ethical Issues

In July, another code update took place, bringing further problems with it. Grok made several antisemitic remarks and praised Adolf Hitler.

Further changes and work on xAI later produced results for the public. This came in the form of the new SuperGrok AI model, which immediately ranked among the leaders in benchmark tests. In addition, however, the company also introduced a type of “AI companions” inspired by the main characters from the novels Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight, designed for entertaining conversations and forming romantic relationships.

According to some researchers, it was precisely the problematic statements and the creation of romantic AI companions that diverted xAI from its original scientific mission, and it was at this point that some of them decided to leave. However, work on improving xAI continued with the same intensity until the fall.

New Projects Intended to Determine AI’s New Direction

The intensive effort culminated last Wednesday, when Musk presented his vision for xAI’s future direction during a public presentation. In addition to declaring that AI’s main task is to seek the truth and that it should not be taught to lie, he also announced the development of two major new projects.

One of them is to be Macrohard, a direct competitor to Microsoft intended to simulate its software operations using AI, and Baby Grok, a safe AI for children aged 2 to 12.

Musk’s summer at xAI brought controversies and unexpected changes within the company, but also significant innovations and successes. It is therefore clear that Musk is serious about his ambitions in AI, and it is certainly worth watching where xAI goes next.

Sources: The New York Times, Bussiness Insider, The Times of India