The New York City Council on Monday issued a subpoena to Elon Musk, requiring him or another representative of SpaceXAI to testify in an investigation into the safety risks of artificial intelligence.
The city’s “investigation will evaluate whether rapidly emerging risks to public safety, cybersecurity, economic stability, privacy, consumers, and businesses warrant immediate legislative action to protect New Yorkers,” according to the letter signed by City Council President Julie Menin and City Attorney Nwamaka Ejebe.
space xMusk’s reusable rocket company merged with his AI venture xAI in February, creating a conglomerate that currently owns X and the chatbot Grok. The combined company went public in June and is currently valued at about $2 trillion. Last month, SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor.
Lawsuits are piling up against SpaceXAI after Grok enabled the mass production of deepfake porn based on images of real people without their consent. The City of Baltimore accused the company of violating consumer protection laws and engaging in deceptive trade practices by advertising its Grok image generation and editing tools as generally safe.
SpaceXAI is also facing a proposed class action lawsuit brought by teenagers after Grok produced images depicting them in sexual and lewd scenarios.
The New York City Council said in a press release on Monday that Musk’s testimony will take place on October 5th in an “unusual full hearing session” with all 51 members present.
“This hearing follows weeks of serious warnings from whistleblowers and AI executives reporting that rogue AI agents are already damaging government databases,” the release states.
The council said in an email to CNBC on Monday that Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta are among the AI companies that have already agreed to send representatives to testify.
—CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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