If someone created a character in your likeness, you might feel flattered. If they happened to be your boss and mandated you hand over your mannerisms and voice so they could use a facsimile of your unique traits to create an AI girlfriend for lonely Elon Musk fanboys, you might feel like you picked the wrong job. Alas, for the employees of xAI, the latter was apparently their reality. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, workers at Musk’s AI company were “compelled to turn over their biometric data” to train AI avatars, including “companions” like Ani, an anime-style AI girlfriend.
Per the publication, at a staff meeting in April of this year, xAI employees working as AI tutors who train the large language models by performing tasks like rating responses to prompts, were informed by a company lawyer that xAI wanted to collect their biometric data, including their facial likeness and voices. That data would be used to teach the animated AI avatars how to act and appear more human during conversations. Prior to the meeting, those employees were reportedly asked to sign a form that would give xAI “a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, royalty-free license” to use their likeness, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
During the meeting, the employees were not explicitly told either way if they could opt out of surrendering their biometric data or if it was mandatory. Per the report, those employees received a note a week later that said, “AI Tutors will actively participate in gathering or providing data, such as…recording audio or participating in video sessions,” and said “such data is a job requirement to advance xAI’s mission.” So, that probably erased any ambiguity around the whole situation.
About three months later, xAI launched two AI avatars—including Ani, the flagship anime girlfriend—which Musk reportedly oversaw the development of directly. Employees who lent their biometric data to the project were reportedly put off by how sexualized the AI character was, according to WSJ. Users are able to put the character, who is trained on real people’s biometric information, into lingerie and other skimpy outfits and prompt it to say explicit sexual comments.
While using mandatorily surrendered, copyright-free employee biometric data is almost certainly the creepiest dataset that went into training an xAI product, it’s not the only unusual dataset that the company reportedly pulled from. The Wall Street Journal reported that tutors were also asked to open personal accounts with competitors like OpenAI, Replit, and Bolt to collect examples of how those models respond to specific prompts—a practice that seems like it may be considered a violation of the terms of service for the outside platforms.
In response to a request for comment regarding the report, a spokesperson for xAI said, “Legacy Media Lies.”