Elon Musk’s Grok Has Friends in High Places
A former X executive behind Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot, now serving as US Patent Office chief AI officer, has received a “highly unusual” carveout that allows him to retain company shares while influencing AI policy.
While Robert Hayes’s ongoing financial stake in Grok would normally violate federal ethics law, the US Patent and Trademark Office offered him a broad exemption. (Cheng Xin / Getty Images)
As Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot faces global scrutiny for generating sexualized deepfakes and calling itself “MechaHitler,” a former Grok executive now serving as a “chief AI officer” at the Department of Commerce has been granted a “highly unusual” waiver to keep his stake in Grok’s parent company as he helps craft industry policy.
In November, Robert Hayes, a senior adviser and acting chief AI officer at the US Patent and Trademark Office, was granted a rare exemption from federal conflict-of-interest law to keep his 22,100 shares in xAI, the artificial intelligence company behind Grok, per ethics records obtained by the Lever.
In his role, which he began in September, Hayes is responsible for crafting intellectual property policy to “advance a positive future for” artificial intelligence. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Commerce and the US Patent and Trademark Office were tasked with studying and mitigating the harms of “deepfake” artificial images and videos.
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