JULY 15 – The Pentagon has signed a multi-million greenback deal to start utilizing Elon Musk’s synthetic intelligence chatbot, Grok, as a part of a wider rollout of AI instruments for presidency use, the Department of Defence confirmed.
Announced on Monday by Musk’s firm xAI, the $200m (£149m) contract is a part of its “Grok for Government” programme, and aligns with the Trump administration’s push for extra aggressive adoption of synthetic intelligence.
It comes simply days after Grok sparked backlash for spouting antisemitic posts, together with reward for Adolf Hitler on X, the social media platform owned by Musk.
Musk stated the bot was “too compliant” and “too desirous to please”. He stated the difficulty was being addressed.
Musk’s xAI says the brand new deal will give US authorities departments entry to Grok 4, the newest model of the chatbot, and supply customized instruments for nationwide safety use.
The firm additionally plans to supply technical help for categorized environments.
The Pentagon additionally introduced awarding related contracts to Anthropic, Google and OpenAI – every with a $200m ceiling.
“The adoption of AI is remodeling the Department’s capacity to help our warfighters and keep strategic benefit over our adversaries,” stated the administration’s Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty.
Musk’s increasing authorities partnerships come amid a deteriorating relationship with President Donald Trump.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss had spent 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars} on Trump’s re-election effort in 2024, and actively campaigned for him.
He was later appointed to run the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – a federal cost-cutting initiative tasked with lowering the dimensions of the US authorities.
But in current months, Musk started overtly criticising what Trump had dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill”, a sprawling spending and tax cuts laws that the Tesla boss stated was too expensive for Americans.
Musk resigned from his submit at Doge in May, although the division has not been formally disbanded.
Since then, Trump had recommended Doge might be deployed to hurt Musk’s corporations.
Trump additionally recommended he may deport Musk, who’s an American citizen and was born in South Africa. He additionally holds Canadian citizenship.
While on the helm of Doge, the White House was criticised for permitting Musk to have unfettered entry to troves of presidency information on American residents.
Despite the fall-out, Musk’s xAI has continued to broaden its authorities work. Its newly-announced contract can also create an avenue for that information assortment to proceed.
Grok was launched in late 2023 as a extra unfiltered various to different AI chatbots like ChatGPT. It is already built-in into Musk’s social media platform X, previously often called Twitter.
By BBC
