Report says xAI unpaid $420 tax data incentive months later

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, has not yet paid employees a promised $420 incentive for submitting their personal tax returns as training data for its Grok AI model, according to a report based on internal communications. The request for sensitive financial documents was made earlier this year as the company sought to improve Grok's capabilities ahead of the U.S. tax filing deadline.

Company managers reportedly asked employees to volunteer their completed tax filings, along with supporting documents, to enhance the AI's ability to handle tax-related tasks. In exchange, employees were offered the $420 payment and early access to X Money, a payments system under development for the X platform. However, multiple employees who provided their data have not received the payment months later, and inquiries have reportedly been met with information that the manager overseeing the program is no longer with the company.

The incident highlights the intensive data collection practices employed by AI firms to train their models, particularly using real-world, complex financial information that is difficult to obtain at scale from public sources. Tax returns contain highly...