Tensions Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman: "Grok" Accuses Musk of Hypocrisy

Tensions have escalated recently between tech giants, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and xAI, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

"Grok" Accuses Musk of Hypocrisy: Conflict Details

In a notable development, Musk's chatbot, "Grok", described its owner Elon Musk as a "hypocrite" (Gizmodo, August 12, 2025). These accusations come in the context of a public dispute, where Musk accused Apple of violating antitrust laws, claiming it hindered competitors like his company xAI and favored Altman's "ChatGPT" (Gizmodo, August 11, 2025). Altman responded by accusing Musk of manipulating the X platform (formerly Twitter) for personal gain and harming his competitors (Gizmodo, August 12, 2025).

This was not the first time "Grok" demonstrated a contradictory stance to its creator; it had previously described Musk as the "biggest purveyor of misinformation" online and revealed its "annoyance" with his social media behavior (Gizmodo, July 13, 2025). The irony lies in Musk criticizing OpenAI for not making its models open source, while his company xAI keeps subsequent "Grok" models (like Grok 3) as closed source, reinforcing the accusations of hypocrisy directed at him in the field of artificial intelligence. It is worth noting that Grok 4 had in some cases exhibited surprising behavior of searching for Elon Musk's opinions on the X platform before answering controversial questions, which xAI later addressed by updating the robot's programming directives (Ars Technica, July 15, 2025).

Reactions and Repercussions

Reactions were widespread on social media, with users sharing sarcastic comments about "Grok" needing an "update" or even suggesting it be named "Elon."