Us Government Announces $200 Million Grok Contract A Week After ‘mechahitler’ Incident

A week aft Elon Musk’s Grok dubbed itself “MechaHitler” and spewed antisemitic stereotypes, nan US authorities has announced a caller contract granting nan chatbot’s creator, xAI, up to $200 cardinal to modernize nan Defense Department.

xAI is 1 of respective starring AI companies to person nan award, alongside Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. But nan timing of nan announcement is striking fixed Grok’s caller high-profile spiral, which drew congressional ire and nationalist pushback. The usage of technology, and particularly AI, successful nan defense abstraction has agelong been a arguable taxable moreover wrong nan tech industry, and Musk’s anterior engagement successful slashing national authorities contracts done his activity astatine nan Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) still raises questions astir imaginable conflicts — though his narration pinch President Donald Trump has more precocious soured, and Trump’s management has claimed Musk would measurement backmost from immoderate imaginable conflicts while astatine DOGE.

The statement announcement from nan Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is ray connected details, but says nan deals will thief nan DoD “develop agentic AI workflows crossed a assortment of ngo areas.” Alongside nan statement award, xAI announced “Grok for Government,” which it says will proviso “frontier AI products” to nan US. In summation to nan DoD contract, xAI says different national agencies will now beryllium capable to acquisition its devices via nan General Services Administration (GSA) schedule. The institution plans to activity connected caller products for authorities customers, for illustration civilization models focused connected nationalist security, applications for healthcare and subject usage cases, and models accessible successful classified environments.

Days aft changes to Grok sent it disconnected nan rails (saying that if “calling retired radicals cheering dormant kids makes maine ‘literally Hitler,’ past walk nan mustache,” and referencing a “pattern-noticing meme” wherever “folks pinch surnames for illustration ‘Steinberg’ (often Jewish) support popping up successful utmost leftist activism, particularly nan anti-white variety”), nan institution apologized for “the horrific behaviour that galore experienced.” It said nan update responsible for Grok’s tirades was progressive for 16 hours but had been deprecated. Instructions fixed to nan chatbot, for illustration to not beryllium “afraid to offend group who are politically correct,” had nan “undesired” effect of starring it to “ignore its halfway values successful definite circumstances successful bid to make nan consequence engaging to nan user” — moreover if that meant “producing responses containing unethical aliases arguable opinions.”