xAI’s Grok development was delayed to keep its Baldur’s Gate knowledge up to scratch, says insider report

February 23, 2026 admin

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It seems difficult for xAI to keep its Grok chatbot out of the news, and it’s usually for a controversial reason. In any case, a sneak peek into the behind-the-scenes of Grok development has provided us with some interesting tidbits. This comes from the publication Business Insider, which has an exclusive look at the inner workings of the tech company. It says CEO Elon Musk has become heavily involved in “day-to-day operations,” and this has led to some interesting sidetracking.

One of those sidetracks involves the popular video game Baldur’s Gate; no specific version is named, but it seems likely to be BG3 given its popularity and relevance. According to the report, several high-level engineers were pulled away from other projects to ensure the Grok chatbot provided more accurate responses about the game, delaying the release of a new model.

Grok AI development seems a little hectic at the moment

Musk made it publicly known in a post on X a couple of weeks ago that the company has been reorganizing, parting ways with some employees, while opening up the chance to hire “aggressively”. xAI lost some of its key players, including co-founders Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, leaving the company with just six out of twelve original co-founders remaining.

What seems like a focus on video games isn’t limited to getting Baldur’s Gate information correct, either. Sources claim that one team “was dedicated to teaching Grok how to play one of Musk’s favorite video games, League of Legends”. Musk has previously talked about this before, hoping to set up a showmatch against the “best human team” in the MOBA title.

Let’s see if @Grok 5 can beat the best human team @LeagueOfLegends in 2026 with these important constraints:

1. Can only look at the monitor with a camera, seeing no more than what a person with 20/20 vision would see.

2. Reaction latency and click rate no faster than human.…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2025

If you didn’t already know, OpenAI was doing something similar back in 2018 when it unveiled the OpenAI Five, a set of bots that ended up defeating Dota 2 world champions OG at the time. This was way before the company blew up after launching ChatGPT and becoming one of the leading AI firms.

Business Insider’s report reveals there is a massive group chat run by Musk, “that’s active at all hours,” while detailing the phenomenon of intensive “war rooms” designed to direct focus to particular areas to speed up development. The report claims several employees (current and former) say the company functions differently as a result, with teams pushed into an environment where “everything is a fire drill” as a result of the company’s limited workforce.

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