In a desperate attempt to compete with other AI giants, Elon Musk’s xAI company has urged employees to upload their tax returns to help train an artificial intelligence model. The company promised employees a $420 bonus as an incentive, but two months have passed and the payment has still not been made.
In a desperate attempt to compete with other AI giants, Elon Musk’s xAI company has urged employees to upload their tax returns to help train an artificial intelligence model. The company promised employees a $420 bonus as an incentive, but two months have passed and the payment has still not been made.
Musk's AI company sought to improve Grok's capabilities in the field of taxation ahead of April 15, the deadline for filing tax returns in the US, Cybernews writes .
The company noticed that users were starting to use chatbots like Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT as virtual accountants, so xAI wanted to get a piece of the pie.
According to internal chats, to gain an advantage, xAI managers asked employees to provide their completed tax returns in exchange for a monetary reward.
Those who wanted to earn a little extra money had to provide supporting documents and materials for this or the previous tax year.
Volunteers were to receive not only $420 each, but also early access to his payment platform X Money.
This scheme was later extended to include friends and relatives of employees, provided they had previously used accountants to file their tax returns. They were promised the same $420 reward.
The world's richest man even personally promoted his chatbot as a virtual accountant, stating, "Grok can help with your taxes."
Musk also promised that by using Grok, users will be able to get larger tax refunds.
However, while Musk boasts about Grok's ability to help with taxes after training on his employees' confidential financial data, xAI staff and their families are still waiting for promised payments.
When xAI employees asked about the bonuses, they were told that the manager responsible for the scheme no longer worked for Musk's company.
This situation is very reminiscent of the case when Musk announced his Microsoft counterpart called "Macrohard".
Then, employees were promised a 20% bonus if they provided screenshots of their work computers, which were later to be "fed" to Grok.
The money was eventually paid out, but this story proves once again: Musk is quick to make promises, but in no hurry to fulfill them.
