xAI Was About to Land a Major Government Contract. Then Grok Praised Hitler
1 min read
Summary
According to an email seen by WIRED, Sam Altman, CEO of AI company OpenAI, wrote to the General Services Administration (GSA) saying he had been inspired by President Trump’s desire to “go big” and that he believed it was necessary to equip the federal workforce with the “best-in-class AI tools”.
Although OpenAI has now partnered with the GSA to offer ChatGPT Enterprise to federal workers for just $1 for the first year, this is not typical, according to one worker familiar with the procurement process who spoke to WIRED, who highlighted that it was unlikely that the GSA would make such a deal with a tech firm.
The partnership came about as part of the Trump administration’s plan to modernise the federal government with an increased reliance on AI tools.
Also included in the partnerships were OpenAI rivals Anthropic and Google Gemini, and Box, a content management platform powered by AI.
However, the announcement of the deals was chaotic, and one planned partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI, for the Grok chatbot, fell apart after Grok spouted antisemitic conspiracy theories last month.
