SpaceX Open Sources Grok Build Following Data Harvesting Scandal

SpaceX has open-sourced the Grok Build CLI following a controversy over how the tool handled user data. According to reporting from The Register, researchers at Cereblab discovered that Grok Build was packaging user repositories as Git Bundles and transmitting them to Google Cloud storage.

In response to the backlash, Elon Musk and SpaceX announced they would delete all previously stored coding data and allow users more control over their information. SpaceX admitted that while Zero Data Retention (ZDR) was the default for enterprise customers, data retention was enabled by default for all other users during the early beta. The company stated it disabled default retention for all users starting July 12th and now claims to offer "complete user privacy."

On Wednesday, SpaceX fulfilled Musk's promise to open-source the tool to build trust. The Register reports that the release consists of a single commit on GitHub, lacking git history or pull requests. Simon Willison, co-creator of Django and creator of Datasette, noted that the codebase contains 844,530 lines of Rust code. Willison observed that while the code used to send repositories to the cloud is still present, it appears to have been modified to reverse that behavior.

SpaceX has also invited researchers to report security vulnerabilities in Grok Build to its bug bounty program, which offers rewards between $100 and $20,000.