Pentagon to deploy Grok despite obscene image row: Why is US military embracing Elon Musk's AI chatbot? | Today News

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Monday that Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok will soon be used by the Pentagon, along with Google's generative AI engine, as the military steps up efforts to feed large amounts of its data into the developing technology.

“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” he said in a speech at Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, in South Texas.

Although Hegseth did not provide an exact rollout date, he mentioned during the speech that the chatbot will go live inside the defence department's network later this month, AP reported.

This announcement comes just days after xAI's Grok, which is embedded into Musk-owned social media platform X, faced global backlash for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of individuals without their consent. Since then, the chatbot has come under intense legal pressure from governments of different countries.

During the speech, Hegseth emphasised the need to streamline and incorporate technological innovations within the military, saying, “We need innovation to come from anywhere and evolve with speed and purpose.”

He noted that the Pentagon possesses “combat-proven operational data from two decades of military and intelligence operations”.

“AI is only as good as the data that it receives, and we’re going to make sure that it’s there,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems is for them to operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications”, adding that the Pentagon's “AI will not be woke”.

This aligns with how Musk developed and pitched Grok, calling the chatbot an alternative to what he describes as “woke AI” from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Grok has previously sparked controversy, including in July last year when it appeared to make antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and circulated several antisemitic posts.

Malaysia and Indonesia were among the first countries to block access to Grok following the widespread backlash over its content. In response to the growing criticism and regulatory pressure, the chatbot has since limited its image generation and editing features to paying users.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom's media regulator has also launched an investigation into X (formerly Twitter) on Monday over concerns that its Grok AI chatbot was creating sexually intimate deepfake images in violation of its duty to protect people in the UK from illegal content.

X's Grok has also faced intense legal pressure in India. The social media platform, however, admitted its mistake and removed about 3,500 pieces of content, as well as deleted over 600 accounts, after the IT Ministry raised concerns over obscene content linked to Grok, PTI reported. X has assured the authorities that it would comply with Indian laws.