XAI Used Employee Biometric Data to Train Elon Musk’s AI Girlfriend

Why It Matters

The practice spotlights growing labor‑rights and privacy challenges in the AI industry, exposing xAI to potential legal and reputational risk while highlighting how firms are monetizing employee biometric data to power commercial AI services.

Summary

Elon Musk’s xAI mandated that employees submit biometric data—including faces and voices—to train its new "Ani" AI chatbot, an anime‑styled, NSFW companion offered to X’s $30‑a‑month SuperGrok subscribers. Staff assigned as AI tutors were required to sign release forms granting xAI a perpetual, worldwide, royalty‑free license to use their likenesses under a confidential project dubbed "Project Skippy." Some workers pushed back, citing concerns that their images could be sold or used in deepfakes, but were told the data collection was a job requirement to advance the company’s mission. The move underscores the company’s reliance on employee‑generated data to enhance its consumer‑facing AI products.