'Grok Build' Coding Tool Open Sourced This Week, Promises to Respect Zero Data Retention (theregister.com) 38
Elon Musk confirmed SpaceX has open sourced the Grok Build CLI this week, reports The Register, "just days after researchers caught the AI tool scooping up users' entire repositories and uploading them to company-controlled cloud storage."
That discovery had "gathered so much negative attention that Elon Musk felt compelled to issue a public statement alongside SpaceX, and its technical staff, promising to delete all data that Grok Build has ever stored and give users more choice over how their data is handled." SpaceXAI's data grab was first publicized Sunday [July 12] by Cereblab, who probed Grok Build traffic and found that repos were being packaged up as Git Bundles and beamed to Google Cloud storage... [Elon Musk] said SpaceX would open-source Grok Build to sow greater trust in the product, after the codebase was audited for security vulnerabilities... ["Open-sourcing Grok Build allows anyone to support making a reliable and robust harness," SpaceX posted on X.com. "Check out our code, including the Git repo for the Grok Build CLI."]
In a separate statement accompanying the open source announcement, SpaceX said it has always respected Zero Data Retention (ZDR), which was applied to enterprise customers by default, and acknowledged that data retention was enabled by default for everyone else, which has now been corrected. It said: "In response to user questions about privacy: Since launch, Grok Build has fully respected zero data retention (ZDR). All users have always had the ability to disable data upload in the CLI. When data upload was disabled, this choice was respected. In the early beta, data retention was enabled by default for non-ZDR users. Based on your feedback, we changed this. We are now going further to protect privacy. With all retained data deleted, retention default off, and an open-source harness, we are offering complete user privacy. You can also run Grok Build fully open-sourced and local-first with your own inference.
"We disabled default retention for all Grok Build users starting on July 12th. Additionally, we are deleting all coding data that was previously retained, ensuring every user's preferences are respected. With these steps, Grok Build goes beyond other major coding products to protect user privacy."
SpaceX also invited researchers to probe Grok Build for security issues and report them to its bug bounty program, which offers rewards ranging from $100-$20,000, depending on the severity.
The article notes Simon Willison, creator of Datasette and co-creator of Django, wrote this week that the Grok Build codebase comprises 844,530 lines of Rust code. "There are still remnants of the code that used to upload everything to Google Cloud," Willison writes, "but they seem to have been disabled now."
Elon Musk also posted Wednesday that "Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of X open source, with no exceptions. Moreover, we will invite third party reviewers to examine the system that is running to confirm that the open source code is what is running."
That discovery had "gathered so much negative attention that Elon Musk felt compelled to issue a public statement alongside SpaceX, and its technical staff, promising to delete all data that Grok Build has ever stored and give users more choice over how their data is handled." SpaceXAI's data grab was first publicized Sunday [July 12] by Cereblab, who probed Grok Build traffic and found that repos were being packaged up as Git Bundles and beamed to Google Cloud storage... [Elon Musk] said SpaceX would open-source Grok Build to sow greater trust in the product, after the codebase was audited for security vulnerabilities... ["Open-sourcing Grok Build allows anyone to support making a reliable and robust harness," SpaceX posted on X.com. "Check out our code, including the Git repo for the Grok Build CLI."]
In a separate statement accompanying the open source announcement, SpaceX said it has always respected Zero Data Retention (ZDR), which was applied to enterprise customers by default, and acknowledged that data retention was enabled by default for everyone else, which has now been corrected. It said: "In response to user questions about privacy: Since launch, Grok Build has fully respected zero data retention (ZDR). All users have always had the ability to disable data upload in the CLI. When data upload was disabled, this choice was respected. In the early beta, data retention was enabled by default for non-ZDR users. Based on your feedback, we changed this. We are now going further to protect privacy. With all retained data deleted, retention default off, and an open-source harness, we are offering complete user privacy. You can also run Grok Build fully open-sourced and local-first with your own inference.
"We disabled default retention for all Grok Build users starting on July 12th. Additionally, we are deleting all coding data that was previously retained, ensuring every user's preferences are respected. With these steps, Grok Build goes beyond other major coding products to protect user privacy."
SpaceX also invited researchers to probe Grok Build for security issues and report them to its bug bounty program, which offers rewards ranging from $100-$20,000, depending on the severity.
The article notes Simon Willison, creator of Datasette and co-creator of Django, wrote this week that the Grok Build codebase comprises 844,530 lines of Rust code. "There are still remnants of the code that used to upload everything to Google Cloud," Willison writes, "but they seem to have been disabled now."
Elon Musk also posted Wednesday that "Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of X open source, with no exceptions. Moreover, we will invite third party reviewers to examine the system that is running to confirm that the open source code is what is running."
Be fair - no one could've seen this coming (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, look at how much care Musk's DOGE team put into protecting and sequestering sensitive government data!
Re:Be fair - no one could've seen this coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Stealing all that info is just for training purposes!
Granted, you'd expect a good tool to respect private data, but Grok is a GREAT tool, and great tools steal data!
Also: it's no different from when a human reads something and puts it in their brain forever! If you want SpaceX to erase the information, well maybe you should lobotomize your employees too?
Also: your information isn't that valuable anyhow, don't be so arrogant, it's no big deal.
Also: Let's get rid of copyrights, problem solved!
Re: Be fair - no one could've seen this coming (Score:2)
Dude... how do you compare reading a published book without paying for it to copying the contents of your computer to a server without your knowledge? The problem isn't if a model was trained on your tax records it's that it copied them all without any indication and they're all available to some random grok engineers if they weren't already thanks fucking DOGE.
One IS a copyright question whether you like it or not, the other is straight up malware. Due to the nature of how these things work we know anythin
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why aren't the democrats asking who pocketed the $3 trillion DOGE saved?
Re:Be fair - no one could've seen this coming (Score:5, Informative)
They probably pulled them from the same place Musk got his trillion-dollar plan [nytimes.com] from. Or maybe from the same made-up-numbers generator they used for the data at your link.
What actually happened:
"How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/1... [nytimes.com]
"The reality of DOGE's mediocre savings"
https://fordschool.umich.edu/n... [umich.edu]
"Just how much has DOGE exaggerated its numbers? Now we have receipts."
https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
And also the USAID cuts led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, a slow Ebola response and a really screwed up screwworm mess.
Don't know if we can blame DOGE for the explosive diarrhea, though; that may just be RFKjr.
Re: (Score:1)
Umm, I never claimed the three trillion number was correct or covered in the links. In fact, I explicitly noted that it was pulled out of nowhere, just like's Elon's trillion.
But let's be clear: DOGE lied. And lied again. Everything they published and continue to publish is complete, total absolute bullshit, usually generated by some AI.
The links demonstrate that, and there are many more where those came from. This isn't 'disagreeing about accounting methods'. This is being mad that a group of grifters was
Re: (Score:2)
Um, who would prosecute those "puported" crimes? Who would even gather evidence about those "puported" crimes? Maybe the now-nonexistent inspectors general? Or perhaps the same "justice" department that's busy prosecuting only people who trump personally dislikes?
You're a special kind of stupid, because other than some spelling errors, you aren't quite as stupid as most trump/musk fellators, which makes your ability to polish boots even more repr
Re: (Score:2)
Don't know if we can blame DOGE for the explosive diarrhea, though; that may just be RFKjr.
Turns out that yes, we can blame DOGE for that:
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/0... [cnn.com]
Re: (Score:2)
After all, look at how much care Musk's DOGE team put into protecting and sequestering sensitive government data!
Absolutely! The USB drive was kept safe in their trouser pockets.
Re: (Score:3)
Given that Anthropic open-sourced Claude Code back in March, I don't see this as a big surprise.
Re: (Score:1)
These government departments were copying records off site and erasing it to hide it from DOGE. to be reinstalled once DOGE leaves. The records that showed them cutting welfare checks to dead people or people over 150 years old. They're unable to shut down such fraudulent payments as they are untraceable due to "missing budget codes".
Re: (Score:1)
Citation fucking needed (mostly so we cam laugh at it), because that's just bullshit.
Shouldn't they call it (Score:4, Funny)
"Pedo Build", given who runs it?
Living in the future (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Living in the future (Score:2)
technological solutions to lesser problems like world hunger
I would say we can chew bubblegum and walk at the same time, but that is definitely not even a technical problem in need of a technical solution.
Your code will be uploaded to LLM hosters anyway (Score:3)
Re: Your code will be uploaded to LLM hosters anyw (Score:2)
Everything you paste into a search engine is already sent to their servers so what's the harm in secretly uploading the rest of your computer too
Yah I mean eventually I was going to ask a remote server about every little problem on my computer so it might as well just take a full copy without my knowledge, fuck it yolo, hahahaha. Why would just the chat transcript on my screen that is obviously sent to the server be the boundary, copy everything else too, same diff.
My point is we have lots of utilities that use remote servers to do work, and it's generally understood that the inputs sent to the server are now on someone else's computer. An AI model
But does he pinky swear? (Score:5, Insightful)
... promising to delete all data that Grok Build has ever stored and give users more choice over how their data is handled.
The cheque is in the mail. I'll pull out before I ejaculate. I didn't fart. And I'll delete your data. Does anybody ever fall for any of that BS? I can kinda see some folks falling for the first three lies. But deleting data? C'mon!
Also, does anybody really believe that the settings for "choice over how their data is handled" are any different from the plastic steering wheels kids get to play with when they're strapped into their parents' cars?
And we believe these new lies why exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
They will just steal all your data more quietly now. This is not "sorry we did it", this is "sorry we did it so obviously you noticed".
Read the fine print (Score:4, Insightful)
What the large print giveth, the tiny print taketh away.
Free as in... (Score:2)
Free as in speech
Free as in beer
Free as in yacht
Free as in mattress
you're looking at this all wrong (Score:1)