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The startup powering Elon Musk’s chaotic AI image generator isn’t his startup, xAI.
Sure, Musk’s xAI launched the AI chatbot Grok, which has been flooding his social media platform, X, with controversial deepfakes. But Grok’s image tool is based on a model from a German startup called Black Forest Labs, TechCrunch reports. The two companies, xAI and Black Forest Labs, recently announced their partnership. Black Forest Labs is funded in part by Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm whose founders are politically aligned with Musk.
The startup xAI launched last year and recently raised $6 billion from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The funding round pushed the company’s valuation to $24 billion. The company counts AI talent from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research GOOGL+1.44%, Microsoft Research MSFT-0.04%, and other companies among its employees. Its chatbot Grok also launched last year.
Grok is already making blunders. It’s made a lot of errors summarizing the news, and it’s been called out for spreading election disinformation. Its new image tool concocts deepfake images of Taylor Swift in lingerie, Barack Obama stabbing Joe Biden with a knife, Kamala Harris holding a gun, and Bill Gates doing cocaine. That’s even though Grok says it “avoid[s] generating images that are pornographic, excessively violent, hateful, or that promote dangerous activities.”
Elon Musk seems unremorseful about deepfakes. In fact, Musk recently reposted a AI-generated video of Kamala Harris on X.