According to Business Insider, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI laid off at least 500 data annotation employees on Friday evening. These employees were primarily responsible for training the company's chatbot, Grok. xAI notified employees via email that the company plans to reduce general AI tutor positions and shift its strategic focus to "specialized AI tutors." "Following a comprehensive review of our human data work, we have decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritization of specialized AI tutors while reducing investment in general AI tutor positions. This strategic shift is effective immediately. As part of this adjustment, we will no longer need most general AI tutor positions, and your employment with xAI will be terminated." According to the email, laid-off employees will receive pay for the duration of their contracts or until November 30th, but will lose access to company systems on the day they receive the notice. The data annotation team is xAI's largest department, and its members played a key role in the development of Grok, helping the chatbot understand the world by contextualizing and categorizing raw data.