Elon Musk is in a legal fight with Microsoft but made a friendly virtual appearance on the software giant’s annual technology showcase to disclose that his Grok artificial intelligence chatbot will now be hosted on Microsoft’s data centers.
“It’s incredible to have you ever at our developer conference,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said to Musk in a pre-recorded video conversation broadcast Monday at Microsoft’s Construct conference in Seattle.
Musk last yr sued Microsoft and its close business partner OpenAI in a dispute over Musk’s foundational contributions to OpenAI, which Musk helped start. Musk now runs his own AI company, xAI, maker of Grok, a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also spoke with Nadella via live video call earlier at Monday’s conference.
Musk’s deal signifies that the most recent versions of xAI’s Grok models can be hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, alongside competing models from OpenAI and other corporations, including Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Europe-based AI startups Mistral and Black Forest Labs and Chinese company DeepSeek.
The Grok partnership comes just days after xAI needed to fix the chatbot to stop it from repeatedly bringing up South African racial politics and the topic of “white genocide” in public interactions with users of Musk’s social media platform X. The corporate blamed an worker’s “unauthorized modification” for the unsolicited commentary, which mirrored South Africa-born Musk’s own concentrate on the subject.
Musk didn’t address last week’s controversy in his chat with Nadella but described honesty because the “best policy” for AI safety.
“We’ve got and can make mistakes, but we aspire to correct them in a short time,” Musk said.
Nadella was interrupted by protest over Gaza
Monday’s Construct conference also became the most recent Microsoft event to be interrupted by a protest over the corporate’s work with the Israeli government. Microsoft has previously fired employees who protested company events, including the company’s fiftieth anniversary party in April.
“Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians?” a protester shouted in the primary minutes of Nadella’s introductory talk. “How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”
Nadella continued his presentation because the protesters were escorted out. Microsoft acknowledged last week that it provided AI services to the Israeli military for the war in Gaza but said it has found no evidence to this point that its Azure platform and AI technologies were used to focus on or harm people in Gaza.
Elon Musk is in a legal fight with Microsoft but made a friendly virtual appearance on the software giant’s annual technology showcase to disclose that his Grok artificial intelligence chatbot will now be hosted on Microsoft’s data centers.
“It’s incredible to have you ever at our developer conference,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said to Musk in a pre-recorded video conversation broadcast Monday at Microsoft’s Construct conference in Seattle.
Musk last yr sued Microsoft and its close business partner OpenAI in a dispute over Musk’s foundational contributions to OpenAI, which Musk helped start. Musk now runs his own AI company, xAI, maker of Grok, a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also spoke with Nadella via live video call earlier at Monday’s conference.
Musk’s deal signifies that the most recent versions of xAI’s Grok models can be hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, alongside competing models from OpenAI and other corporations, including Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Europe-based AI startups Mistral and Black Forest Labs and Chinese company DeepSeek.
The Grok partnership comes just days after xAI needed to fix the chatbot to stop it from repeatedly bringing up South African racial politics and the topic of “white genocide” in public interactions with users of Musk’s social media platform X. The corporate blamed an worker’s “unauthorized modification” for the unsolicited commentary, which mirrored South Africa-born Musk’s own concentrate on the subject.
Musk didn’t address last week’s controversy in his chat with Nadella but described honesty because the “best policy” for AI safety.
“We’ve got and can make mistakes, but we aspire to correct them in a short time,” Musk said.
Nadella was interrupted by protest over Gaza
Monday’s Construct conference also became the most recent Microsoft event to be interrupted by a protest over the corporate’s work with the Israeli government. Microsoft has previously fired employees who protested company events, including the company’s fiftieth anniversary party in April.
“Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians?” a protester shouted in the primary minutes of Nadella’s introductory talk. “How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”
Nadella continued his presentation because the protesters were escorted out. Microsoft acknowledged last week that it provided AI services to the Israeli military for the war in Gaza but said it has found no evidence to this point that its Azure platform and AI technologies were used to focus on or harm people in Gaza.
