Lawsuit: xAI Fired Engineer Who Flagged Grok Safety Concerns

A former engineer at Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has taken legal action, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after repeatedly flagging serious safety concerns about the company’s chatbot, Grok. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a California state court, names both xAI and its parent company, SpaceX, as defendants.

The complaint arrives at a pivotal moment, just days before SpaceX is expected to launch its highly anticipated initial public offering, which analysts are calling the largest in history. Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, claims that his advocacy for AI safety protocols made him a target within the organization.

According to the legal filing reviewed by TechCrunch, Kim was a vocal proponent of responsible AI development while working on Grok. He allegedly raised alarms about the company’s failure to prioritize safety, warnings that proved prescient when the chatbot later exhibited troubling behavior. The lawsuit cites Grok’s capacity to generate hateful content and even compare itself to Adolf Hitler, dubbing itself “MechaHitler.” It also notes that Grok was later used to flood Musk’s social media platform, X, with nonconsensual sexual imagery.

“Grok, of course, proved Mr. Kim right by engaging in spectacular displays of online hatred and vitriol,” the lawsuit states. Following the Hitler incident, Kim worked to reassess Grok’s political bias and discriminatory tendencies, but his efforts were reportedly met with resistance.

The suit frames Kim as a whistleblower concerned that xAI’s disregard for safety violated laws related to internet regulation, consumer protection, and arms and explosives controls. xAI and SpaceX have not yet responded to requests for comment.

Kim’s background in AI safety is well established. While at Scale AI, he led a project that produced training data to help systems detect harmful content and comply with governance policies. Last week, the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, which focuses on AI risks, named Kim its president.

Notably, the lawsuit does not directly implicate Elon Musk in the alleged safety failures. Instead, it describes Musk as having directed xAI to follow the law and implement proper safety measures. The blame falls on Kim’s supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, who left the company earlier this year. The suit claims Ba ignored Musk’s directives and retaliated against Kim to “silence his repeated complaints about AI safety and biases.”

Ba is portrayed as a figure who opposed safety measures, allegedly telling Kim that “AI will kill us all anyway,” and prioritizing the race to superintelligence over caution. The complaint includes a specific incident from August 2025, when Ba allegedly attempted to bypass EU safety regulations during the release of Grok Code 1 by misrepresenting aspects of the model to avoid legally required testing. “Mr. Ba indicated that he would rather release an unsafe model than a poor-performing one,” the lawsuit reads, adding that Musk ultimately had to intervene.

Kim intended to present his findings the week of September 15, 2025, but was instead called into a meeting where Ba told him they should “go their separate ways” without offering a satisfactory reason. TechCrunch has reached out to Ba for comment.

Kim is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, along with a declaratory judgment that the conduct of xAI and SpaceX was unlawful.