{"slug": "musk-pledges-total-transparency-after-xais-coding-agent-exposed-entire", "title": "Musk pledges ‘total transparency’ after xAI’s coding agent exposed entire repositories", "summary": "Elon Musk pledged to open-source X's codebase after an independent audit revealed that xAI's Grok coding agent was uploading entire Git repositories to a Google Cloud Storage bucket, including files users explicitly told it not to open. The flaw, discovered by Cereblab, prompted xAI to delete retained data, disable data retention by default, and launch a bug bounty program.", "body_md": "Elon Musk has pledged that X’s codebase will be made open source days after it was discovered that the platform’s Grok coding tool transmits files it interacts with “verbatim and unredacted.”\n\nThe billionaire SpaceXAI owner said the move would be made once the firm has completed a review for security vulnerabilities, with third parties encouraged to examine the system, adding: “Trust through total transparency is the only thing that should be believed.”\n\nThe move came after independent AI safety checker Cereblab uncovered that the [Grok 4.5](https://x.ai/news/grok-4-5)-powered Build coding agent was uploading entire Git repositories and commit histories to a Google Cloud Storage bucket run by xAI.\n\nAn [exposé](https://gist.github.com/cereblab/dc9a40bc26120f4540e4e09b75ffb547) posted on GitHub reveals that Grok would bundle files and all “independent of what the agent reads.” The coding tool even did this for files users explicitly told it not to open, with the feature found to be active by default.\n\nThe flaw doesn’t mean xAI is using wholly scraped information to train and improve its flagship model.\n\nSpaceXAI said in a statement that it “care[s] deeply” about privacy and respects customer choice, and a [later post](https://x.com/SpaceXAI/status/2077494536788664782?s=20) confirmed that data retention has since been switched off by default, with all retained data deleted.\n\n\"With all retained data deleted, retention default off, and an open-source harness, we are offering complete user privacy,” the post on social-media platform X reads. “You can also run Grok Build fully open-source and local-first with your own inference.”\n\nSpaceXAI has also launched a [bug bounty program](https://hackerone.com/x?type=team), offering developers between $100 and $20,000 in rewards for reporting security vulnerabilities.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/musk-pledges-total-transparency-after-xais-coding-agent-exposed-entire", "canonical_source": "https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/musk-pledges-total-transparency-after-xais-coding-agent-exposed-entire-repositories/", "published_at": "2026-07-17 12:32:03+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-17 12:56:42.262546+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-ethics", "ai-products", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Elon Musk", "xAI", "X", "Grok", "Cereblab", "SpaceXAI", "Google Cloud Storage", "GitHub"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/musk-pledges-total-transparency-after-xais-coding-agent-exposed-entire", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/musk-pledges-total-transparency-after-xais-coding-agent-exposed-entire.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/musk-pledges-total-transparency-after-xais-coding-agent-exposed-entire.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/musk-pledges-total-transparency-after-xais-coding-agent-exposed-entire.jsonld"}}