Elon Musk’s companies SpaceX and xAI are reportedly participating in a secret new Pentagon competition, aiming to develop autonomous swarms of voice-controlled drones.
As per Bloomberg, the entry marks a major shift for the billionaire, as SpaceX has long been a defense contractor, and the tech billionaire has long been advocating AI development, although he has opposed generating“new tools for killing people.”
For the project, only select companies are participating in the six-month tender with a $100 million fund.
The capability to coordinate the actions of several drones at the same time already exists but developing software to pilot multiple dozen devices at once remains a big task.
As per report, the project will progress through five stages, initiating with software development and concluding with real-world testing.
It will reportedly be utilised by unmanned aerial vehicles for offensive purposes.
In January, the xAI chatbot Grok was incorporated with the Pentagon’s network. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stated that he “will provide all necessary data” from military IT systems, including information from the intelligence department.
It is important to note the US Department of Defense allocated $200 million to the leading companies across industry, including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI for developing AI solutions in the security sector.
The department’s Chief Digital and AI Office stated that the funds would help accelerate the integration of advanced neural network capabilities into national security tools.
