xAI employees participated in a project named "Skippy" that required them to record their facial expressions and interactions to train the Grok AI model in detecting human emotions. The initiative caused discomfort among workers who were concerned about how their likenesses would be used. Employees engaged in recordings over a week, simulating casual conversations to instruct the AI. The training aimed to enhance Grok's abilities in recognizing facial movements and emotional responses but prompted some workers to opt out due to privacy concerns.
The project was designed to train the company's AI model to "recognize and analyze facial movements and expressions, such as how people talk, react to others' conversations, and express themselves in various conditions."
Internal documents and Slack messages viewed by Business Insider show that the project left many workers uneasy, with some raising alarms about how their likenesses might be used.
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