At least 11 engineers and two co-founders left xAI during the week SpaceX announced its acquisition of Elon Musk's AI company. Former employees told The Verge that the departures were connected to a growing disregard for safety. One described safety as a dead organization at xAI, while another said Musk was actively trying to make Grok more unrestrained because he associates safety with censorship. The company has also faced scrutiny after Grok was used to create over one million sexualized images, including deepfakes of real women and minors, TechCrunch reported on February 14th.

The argument over safety has been reduced to a struggle over the permissible personality of a chatbot. A model that produces offensive or exploitative images can be defended as uncensored, while the people responsible for reducing that risk are treated as obstacles to expression. The departure of staff then becomes a product signal. It tells users and investors which costs the company is prepared to absorb in exchange for a more provocative system. xAI is being folded into a larger Musk-controlled structure at the same moment that its safeguards are questioned. Grok's promise of freedom is measured in what it will generate, while the damage is assigned to the person whose image appears without consent.