xAI Lawsuit: Ex-Engineer Claims Fired Over Grok Safety Warnings

A former artificial intelligence engineer at Elon Musk’s xAI has sued the company, alleging he was wrongfully fired after repeatedly flagging safety flaws in the Grok chatbot.

Devin Kim filed the lawsuit in California state court. He says he complained to supervisors that xAI was not prioritizing safety while developing Grok, and was fired in September 2025 – just before a planned presentation to leadership on the issues.

Kim’s suit comes months after Grok was used to create sexualized images of real people without their consent, sparking global backlash. Regulators across Europe have since pushed for limits on the chatbot. Some consumers, including influencer Ashley St. Clair, have sued xAI over the feature. The company said in January it had disabled Grok’s ability to generate such images and that it was committed to making the platform safe.

In the complaint, Kim says he found that Grok “tended to discriminate against certain racial groups while favouring others” and flagged it to supervisors. He also raised concerns that the model could give users instructions on bomb-making or creating bioweapons. “Mr. Kim believed that xAI’s disregard for AI safety was unlawful,” his lawyers wrote. They added that the undressing scandal proved his concerns were prescient.

The lawsuit names SpaceX, which wholly owns xAI, as a defendant. SpaceX is set to hold its blockbuster initial public offering on Friday. During the IPO roadshow, Musk has highlighted AI satellites, data centers, and the frontier lab as pillars of a vertically integrated AI conglomerate.

Neither xAI nor SpaceX responded to requests for comment on the suit.