According to reports, Elon Musk stated that his AI company, xAI, used parts of OpenAI’s models to train its Grok chatbot. Report via TechCrunch.
This is a rare public acknowledgment by a major artificial intelligence developer of practices that are coming under increasing scrutiny. Meanwhile, Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI is proceeding in federal court, with hearings this week set to examine the company’s governance structure and the broader AI landscape.
Musk made the above statements while testifying on Thursday in a federal court in California. He is suing OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and co-founder Greg Brockman. The core of the lawsuit is Musk’s claim that OpenAI has deviated from its original nonprofit mission.
During the Q&A session, Musk was asked whether xAI had used distillation on OpenAI models. He reportedly answered, “Partially,” and said this approach is common in the industry.
Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, and Wojciech Zaremba, a nonprofit organization focused on developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Musk left the company in 2018.
Distillation refers to training a new AI system by querying the public interface or API of an existing model and using those outputs as learning signals. In February, Anthropicwas sued by multiple Chinese AI developers accused of using fraudulent accounts to extract large volumes of responses from its Claude chatbot to train competing systems. Earlier this month, the White House also reported on this issue.Warned of an “industrial-scale” effort to replicate U.S. AI capabilities using proxy accounts and jailbreaking techniques.
Elon Musk's testimony indicates that this approach is used not only by foreign competitors but also by U.S.-based artificial intelligence companies.
The legal boundaries are still unclear. While distillation itself is not illegal, it may raise questions about whether it violates platform rules or API usage terms.
xAI entered this market in July 2023, joining companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which have larger teams and more established infrastructure. Earlier that year, Musk and other tech figures had publicly stated they were working to enter this market. Signature An open letter called for a six-month pause on developing more advanced AI systems due to potential risks.
Elon Musk's remarks suggest that the company may have leveraged technology from his previous company to close the gap.
OpenAI and xAI have not yet responded to Decrypt's request for comment.