AI company’s chatbot faces criticism over its generation of sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and girls

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company has raised $20bn in its latest funding round, the startup announced Tuesday, even as its marquee chatbot Grok faces backlash over generating sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and underage girls.

xAI’s Series E funding round featured big-name investors, including Nvidia, Fidelity Management and Resource Company, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and Valor Equity Partners – the private investment firm of Musk’s longtime friend and former Doge member Antonio Gracias. The funding round exceeded its initial $15bn target, according to xAI’s press release. The company touted Grok’s image-generation abilities in the announcement of its latest funding round.

The novelty of eating at a diner owned by the richest person in the world seems to have worn off in just a few months

Less than six months since it opened, Elon Musk’s Tesla Diner has the feel of a ghost town. Gone is the Optimus robot serving popcorn, gone are the carnivore-diet-inspired “Epic Bacon” strips, gone are the hours-long, hundred-person lines wrapped around the block. Even the restaurant’s all-star chef, Eric Greenspan, is gone. The Hollywood burger-and-fries shop seems like a shell of the bustling eatery it was when it opened in late July.

On a balmy Friday afternoon in December, the parking lot for Tesla car charging was, at best, half full. Inside what the company describes as a “retro-futuristic” diner, a handful of people trickled in, ordering burgers and hotdogs or asking for merch. The upstairs deck, AKA “Skypad”, was vacant except for a pair of employees stringing holiday lights. More staff was busy at work, buffing fingerprints off the chrome walls and taking out the trash, than there were customers. The diner was spotless.