{"id":245498,"date":"2026-06-10T22:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/xai-fired-an-engineer-who-raised-alarms-about-grok-safety-new-lawsuit-claims-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T22:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:31:19","slug":"xai-fired-an-engineer-who-raised-alarms-about-grok-safety-new-lawsuit-claims-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/xai-fired-an-engineer-who-raised-alarms-about-grok-safety-new-lawsuit-claims-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"xAI fired an engineer who raised alarms about Grok safety, new lawsuit claims | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"


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A former engineer at Elon Musk\u2019s xAI has filed suit against the company and its parent SpaceX claiming he was fired for raising concerns about AI safety.<\/p>\n

Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the suit in a California state court on Tuesday. The complaint comes days before SpaceX is set to join the public markets<\/a> in what\u2019s shaping up to be the largest IPO in history.<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit<\/a>, which TechCrunch has viewed, Kim became a prominent voice for AI safety while working on Grok, xAI\u2019s AI chatbot. He allegedly complained repeatedly about xAI\u2019s failure to prioritize safety in Grok\u2019s development, a product that has since come under fire for a range of safety and behavioral issues. In particular, Kim was concerned with the possibility that Grok could foment discrimination and help spread information about weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrok, of course, proved Mr. Kim right by engaging in spectacular displays of online hatred and vitriol, with the model likening itself to Hitler (\u2018MechaHitler<\/a>\u2019),\u201d the lawsuit reads. \u201cFollowing the Hitler debacle, Mr. Kim worked to re-evaluate Grok\u2019s political bias and discriminatory tendencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

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September was my last month at xAI! I joined as one of the first members of the post-training team in 2024 and eventually led research tooling, where we built some of the world\u2019s best systems to accelerate Grok\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

On my first day, I was at the whiteboard with @ibab<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Devin Kim (@devindkim) October 3, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

A few months after Kim departed xAI, Grok made headlines again when the chatbot was used to flood X \u2014 Musk\u2019s social media platform that also falls under the xAI umbrella \u2014 with nonconsensual sexual imagery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit also positions Kim as a whistleblower who was concerned about xAI\u2019s alleged disregard for AI safety as \u201cunlawful\u201d in areas such as internet regulation, consumer protection and unfair business practices, and arms and explosives regulation, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

xAI and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s focus on AI safety predates his time at xAI. While working at Scale AI, Kim worked on early safety AI initiatives, like leading a project that produced training data for AI to train systems to detect harmful content and comply with governance policies.\u00a0Last week, the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, which focuses on AI risks, named Kim<\/a> as its president.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the lawsuit doesn\u2019t implicate Musk himself as a reason for a lack of safety. Rather, Kim\u2019s lawyers describe Musk as having directed xAI to follow the law and implement appropriate safety and testing processes. Instead the claim targets Kim\u2019s supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba \u2014 who left the company earlier this year<\/a> \u2014 saying that Ba ignored Musk\u2019s directives and retaliated against Kim for pushing for safeguards, in an effort to \u201csilence his repeated complaints about AI safety and biases.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit portrays Ba as someone who vehemently opposed AI safety measures, allegedly telling Kim at one point \u201cAI will kill us all anyway,\u201d and who was instead driven by a mission to make xAI the first to reach superintelligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn one instance in or around August 2025, Mr. Ba attempted to thwart EU safety regulations during the release of Grok Code 1, misrepresenting aspects of the model in order to avoid legally required testing,\u201d the complaint says. \u201cMr. Ba indicated that he would rather release an unsafe model than a poor-performing one. Mr. Musk ultimately had to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit, Kim intended to give a presentation of his findings the week of September 15, 2025, but Ba called him into a meeting and told him they should \u201cgo [their] separate ways\u201d without providing a satisfactory reason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

TechCrunch has reached out to Ba for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a declaratory judgment that xAI and SpaceX\u2019s conduct was unlawful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former engineer at Elon Musk\u2019s xAI has filed suit against the company and its parent SpaceX claiming he was fired for raising concerns about AI safety. Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the suit in a California state court on Tuesday. The complaint comes days before SpaceX is set to join […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-245498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}