Elon Musk's xAI Denies Using OpenAI Code for Grok Chatbot Launch Amid Brewing Rivalry

Did Elon Musk's xAI Use OpenAI Code for Grok Chatbot? The Controversy Explained

Elon Musk's new AI company xAI is facing accusations that it used code from OpenAI to train its new chatbot Grok. This has sparked controversy given the rocky history between Musk and OpenAI.

xAI's Grok Chatbot Accused of Using OpenAI Code

The issue came to light when Grok declined to answer a user's question by citing OpenAI's content policy. This response mirrored how ChatGPT would respond, raising questions if Grok was trained using OpenAI code.

Jax Winterbourne, the user who asked the question, suggested xAI may have used OpenAI's codebase to develop Grok.

In response, an xAI employee with the username Igor Babuschkin admitted they accidentally used some ChatGPT data found online to train Grok. He stated:

“The issue here is that the web is full of ChatGPT outputs so we accidentally picked up some of them when we trained Grok on a large amount of web data. This was a huge surprise to us when we first noticed it. For what it's worth, the issue is very rare and now that we’re aware of it we’ll make sure that future versions of Grok don’t have this problem. Don't worry, no OpenAI code was used to make Grok."

The History Between Musk and OpenAI

This controversy is particularly notable given the rocky history between Elon Musk and OpenAI.

Musk was originally a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015. However, he left the organization in 2018 after his request to become CEO was rejected by other co-founders like current CEO Sam Altman.

There appears to still be some bad blood, as Musk has now launched a rival AI company in xAI.

Grok Chatbot Rolling Out to Select Users

Despite the controversy, xAI is moving forward with plans to roll out Grok to select users.

On December 10th, xAI announced Grok would start rolling out to X Premium Plus subscribers in the US over the next week.

Grok is positioned as a generative AI chatbot that can provide human-like conversational abilities. The bot is accessible through the X website and mobile apps.

The controversy over potentially using OpenAI code has cast doubt on Grok as xAI rushes to get their bot to market. However, xAI maintains no OpenAI code was directly used in development.

This situation highlights the messy competitive dynamics of AI development, as major players like OpenAI and xAI race to release the most advanced bots. The accusations also underscore the difficulty of training AIs from scratch without relying on existing datasets.

As chatbots like Grok and ChatGPT explode in popularity, expect more conflicts to emerge around data usage and originality. xAI will need to clearly differentiate Grok to compete with established bots like ChatGPT in the red-hot AI space.