Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, laid off approximately 500 employees on its data annotation team on Friday, September 13, 2024. This reduction represents about one-third of that team, which is the company's largest and is crucial for training its Grok AI chatbot. The layoffs are part of a strategic shift where xAI is prioritizing the hiring of specialist AI tutors over generalist roles. Affected workers were notified via email and will be paid through their contract end date or November 30, but lost immediate access to company systems. Concurrently, the company announced plans to significantly expand its team of specialist tutors.
