Elon Musk confirms xAI used OpenAI’s models to train Grok

Elon Musk confirms xAI used OpenAI’s models to train Grok,

Elon Musk in front of a background of justice scales.

In a federal courtroom in California on Thursday, Elon Musk testified that his own AI startup, xAI, has used OpenAI’s models to improve its own.

The matter at question is model distillation, a common industry practice by which one larger AI model acts as a “teacher” of sorts to pass on knowledge to a smaller AI model, the “student.” Although it’s often used legitimately within companies using one of their own AI models to train another, it’s also a practice that’s sometimes used by smaller AI labs to try to get their models to mimic the performance of a larger competitor’s model.

Asked on the stand whether he knew what model distillation …

Read the full story at The Verge.

, In a federal courtroom in California on Thursday, Elon Musk testified that his own AI startup, xAI, has used OpenAI’s models to improve its own. The matter at question is model distillation, a common industry practice by which one larger AI model acts as a “teacher” of sorts to pass on knowledge to a smaller […], , Hayden Field, {authorlink}, https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/921546/elon-musk-xai-openai-trial-model-distillation, 04.30.2026, 2PM