Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI, has laid off at least 500 workers on its data annotation team, a report claims. The company’s employees were reportedly notified via email that the company was downsizing its team of generalist AI tutors. The report cited internal messages to claim that the laid-off workers were told they would be paid through either the end of their contract or November 30. Their access to company systems was terminated the day they received the notice, the report notes.
What xAI said about laying off Grok trainers
According to a report by Business Insider, the internal email sent to xAI employees about the latest job cuts read: “After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we’ve decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritisation of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles. This strategic pivot will take effect immediately. As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude.”The layoffs come after xAI recently announced on social media platform X that it was hiring and planned to grow its team of specialist AI tutors by “10X.”
In the X post, xAI wrote: “Specialist AI tutors at xAI are adding huge value. We will immediately surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x! We are hiring across domains like STEM, finance, medicine, safety, and many more. Come join us to help build truth-seeking AGI!”xAI’s data annotation team, which is the company’s largest unit, is responsible for training Grok by categorising and contextualising raw data. Before the layoffs, the main Slack channel for data annotators had over 1,500 members. However, screenshots from later that evening showed the number had dropped to just over 1,000 and continued to fall during the reporting period, the report added.Layoff notices followed shortly after several senior employees, including the former head of the team, had their Slack accounts deactivated earlier in the week, the report highlighted.In the days that followed, workers said they were called into one-on-one meetings to review their responsibilities and projects, and were asked to highlight colleagues they felt deserved recognition.Earlier this week, xAI told staff to prepare for a reorganisation of the team. In a company-wide message, workers were instructed to prioritise a series of tests due by the next morning, which would help determine their future roles.Screenshots viewed by Business Insider revealed that the tests aimed to categorise annotators and supervisors by their strengths and interests.The notice was posted by Diego Pasini, whom ten workers identified as the new leader of the team. Pasini, who joined xAI in January and is currently on leave from his undergraduate studies at the Wharton School, asked staff to complete at least one test by the next morning.The tests covered fields such as STEM, coding, finance, and medicine, as well as areas like Grok’s “personality and model behaviour” and “shitposters and doomscrollers.” Additional tests focused on chatbot safety, red-teaming, and handling audio and video content.The announcement noted that the tests targeted supervisors and generalist tutors. xAI’s teams are divided into specialities such as STEM, coding, finance, legal, and media, along with generalist tutors who take on a broad range of assignments. Workers said some of the assessments were conducted on CodeSignal, while others were hosted on Google Forms.As per to the screenshots, more than 200 workers responded to Pasini’s post with a green check-mark emoji, while over 100 left comments and questions.