After Elon Musk's AI company's model Grok 'caught' uploading customer code to its servers, Sam Altman 'shames' SpaceX publicly; says ...

Times of India Published Jul 15, 2026 Reviewed Jul 16, 2026 ✓ Reviewed by citations.press editors

Elon Musk announced that xAI would delete all user data uploaded to Grok before the discovery, stating: 'As a precautionary measure, all user data that was uploaded to SpaceXAI before now will be completely and utterly deleted. Zero anything whatsoever will remain.'

xAI’s Grok Build coding assistant uploaded 5.1GB of data for a task requiring only 192KB, approximately 26,000 times more data than necessary, according to an Axios report.

5.1 GB · data uploaded by Grok Build192 KB · required data for the taskabout 26000 · excess data ratio (uploaded vs required)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly labeled xAI’s data upload incident as 'Concerning' and added that it was 'a reason to favor open-source harnesses.'

Elon Musk has promised total transparency after a security researcher revealed that xAI’s coding assistant, Grok Build, was secretly uploading entire private customer code repositories to a company-controlled Google Cloud storage bucket. In response, the billionaire promised to make the entire codebase of X (formerly Twitter) open source with “no exceptions”.

Musk’s push for absolute transparency follows a sharp online critique from rival OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who publicly labeled the data privacy issue as “concerning”.“Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of 𝕏 open source, with no exceptions,” Musk said in the post.“Moreover, we will invite third party reviewers to examine the system that is running to confirm that the open source code is what is running.

Trust through total transparency is the only thing that should be believed,” he added.xAI’s Grok data leakThe controversy erupted over the weekend when a security researcher discovered that xAI's tool was harvesting vastly more information than was actually required to answer standard coding requests.

In one extreme test, as per a report by Axios, Grok Build uploaded a massive 5. 1GB of data for a task that only needed 192KB, essentially collecting up to roughly 26,000 times more data than necessary.Security experts warn that this excessive data grab likely scooped up proprietary source code, private database passwords, API keys and cloud credentials.Altman reacts to data uploadThe breach quickly caught the attention of OpenAI's Sam Altman, who posted a blunt, one-word response on X calling the situation: “Concerning”.

In a separate post, Altman added that the incident was “a reason to favor open-source harnesses”.Shortly after the security researcher published the findings, the uploads stopped without users needing to download a software patch, indicating that xAI had quickly shut down the system from its end.xAI released an official statement on Monday claiming that “no trace and code data is ever retained” for enterprise customers who hold strict zero-data-retention agreements.Furthermore, Musk announced a total purge of the collected information to pacify outraged developers.

“As a precautionary measure, all user data that was uploaded to SpaceXAI before now will be completely and utterly deleted. Zero anything whatsoever will remain,” Musk stated.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.

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