space x He has agreed to testify before the New York City Council this week as part of a legislative inquiry into the safety risks of artificial intelligence, the city council announced Tuesday.
The council said in a press release that a public hearing will be held Friday at 10 a.m. ET in front of the technical committee. City Council President Julie Menin and General Counsel Nwamaka Ejebe issued subpoenas on September 28 to Elon Musk and SpaceX’s AI division, forcing them to testify at a public hearing held last week.
representative human, OpenAI, google and Meta Everyone testified at the Oct. 5 hearing, but SpaceX was not present. Menin said in a statement Tuesday that SpaceX agreed to testify in two days after the council announced its intention to seek enforcement of the subpoena by a judge.
“Last Monday, we held an extensive, multi-hour public hearing with whistleblowers, the world’s largest technology companies, and the nation’s leading AI experts,” Menin said in a release Tuesday. “SpaceXAI’s conspicuous absence is unacceptable.”
Musk spun off his AI venture xAI into SpaceX in February, creating a conglomerate that includes its Grok model, which is used by some federal agencies, including the Department of Defense. SpaceX went public in June and is now valued at more than $2 trillion. In August, SpaceX also completed its $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor.
SpaceX competes with Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI market, but Grok lags far behind the models of its top rivals. The New York City Council has launched an investigation after a month of intense debate over the risks posed by advanced AI models.
In its original letter ordering Musk or another SpaceX leader to testify, the council said its investigation would help “assess whether rapidly emerging risks to public safety, cybersecurity, economic stability, privacy, consumers and businesses warrant immediate legislative action to protect New Yorkers.”
The City Council warned that if SpaceX “fails to comply” with the subpoena, the company could be subject to fines and other penalties under New York City laws and regulations.
Technical Committee Chair Carmen de la Rosa told CNBC in a statement that the committee expects a response from SpaceX.
“As Elon Musk’s technology proliferates at the federal level, it’s even more important that the federal government comes to the conversation with a solid context around data privacy, safeguards, and whistleblower protections,” she said.
Lawsuits are piling up against SpaceX after Grok’s image generator enabled the mass production and distribution of deepfake porn based on consenting images of real people.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
—CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed reporting.
WATCH: Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Google executives testify before New York City Council
