Ілон Маск & X (Twitter) / Depositphotos
Elon Musk’s company xAI has hit a new wave of discussions — and this time it’s not about the next Grok update or a scandalous statement by a billionaire. This time, it’s about surveillance.
In early July, employees who train the Grok chatbot were suddenly announced that they were now required to install special Hubstaff software for «monitoring of the». The nuance is this: it’s not just about corporate laptops, but also personal devices.
xAI’s internal documents state that if an employee was not given a laptop, he or she had until July 11 to install Hubstaff on his or her computer. In fact, the program collects URLs, tracks running programs, and can record keystrokes, mouse movements, and take automatic screenshots. After journalists contacted xAI, the company changed its terms: now those who managed to request a corporate laptop are allowed to wait to install Hubstaff until they receive it. The rest of them seem to have to install the software on their personal PCs or buy additional ones.
At Slack, employees are convinced that such a system «serves to optimize workflows, provide a clearer understanding of daily learning activities, and ensure that resources are aligned with staff data management priorities». However, not everyone on the team took the news in stride. On internal Slack, one of the employees publicly announced that he was leaving the company because of Hubstaff. He called the «requirement surveillance disguised as productivity» and «manipulation disguised as culture».
To mitigate the situation, xAI offered an option: either to buy a new device with a $50 per month technical stipend, or to create a separate account on your PC to separate personal and work activities. The company officially says that Hubstaff will not monitor activities outside of business hours, but many doubt the veracity of the statement. In addition to Hubstaff, the company has several other monitoring systems: Rippling for time tracking and its own Starfleet system, which records the duration of tasks and activity on the site.
This is not the first time AI companies have used Hubstaff to monitor their staff. Lawyers believe that such practices may raise legal issues, especially in California, where xAI is headquartered. However, since many employees work remotely from different countries, it all depends on the specific region.
Meanwhile, xAI is focused on something else. This week, the company has already temporarily shut down Grok after a series of anti-Semitic postsand Elon Musk himself announced a new tariff at the same time SuperGrok Heavy for $300 per month and plans to integrate Grok into Tesla.
Source: Business Insider