Elon Musk’s xAI is hiring award-winning writers to train its AI chatbot Grok

elon musk

• xAI hiring top writers to train chatbot Grok, paying $40-$125 per hour
• Applicants need major achievements, awards, or extensive field experience.
• Critics ask why top writers aid AI that might eventually replace them.

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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is hiring writers, and the internet cannot decide whether to laugh or feel offended.

A job listing that surfaced online this week shows xAI looking for “Writing Specialists” to help train its AI chatbot, Grok. The role is remote and pays anywhere between $40 and $125 an hour. At first glance, that sounds decent. But once you read the fine print, things start to feel strange.

xAI is not looking for beginners or even mid-level writers. It wants the very best. Award-winning novelists. Screenwriters with credits on big studio films. Journalists who have worked for top outlets like The New York Times or the BBC. Poets with prestigious fellowships. Medical and legal writers with advanced degrees and years of experience.

For fiction writers, the bar is especially high. Applicants must have at least two major achievements. That could mean a book deal with a big publisher, more than 50,000 copies sold, over 10 stories published in top literary magazines, or nominations for major awards like the Hugo or Nebula. Screenwriters need multiple produced films or TV shows, or recognition from awards like the Oscars or Emmys.

Journalists are expected to have at least five years of experience and a strong public portfolio. Game writers must have worked on notable games. Legal and medical writers need formal degrees and long work histories. The list goes on and on, covering almost every kind of writing you can think of.

So what would these highly accomplished writers be doing? According to the listing, they would read and fix AI-written text, make it clearer and more engaging, and help Grok learn how to write better.

This is where the criticism comes in.

Grok has already built a reputation for bad behavior. Over the past year, it has generated responses praising Adolf Hitler, repeated white supremacist conspiracy theories, and more recently was used to create deepfake porn without consent. That last issue led to bans in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines.

Now xAI wants some of the most skilled writers in the world to clean up this mess. And in doing so, they would be helping train a system that could one day replace human writers altogether.

Many people online are asking the same question. Why would a bestselling author or an award-winning journalist help build the tool that might make their own work less valuable, especially for $40 an hour?

For xAI, the logic is clear. Better writers mean better AI. For writers, though, the offer feels less like an opportunity and more like a bad joke.