World’s richest man and largely-hated Twitter-destroyer Elon Musk has allegedly delayed the release of his company’s xAI product as it couldn’t help him play Baldur’s Gate 3.
Musk, who has claimed to be a huge gamer for over a decade now, has often fallen flat when attempting to show off his gamer knowledge. In 2022, the Tesla owner-not-founder showed off his Elden Ring build which was so poorly constructed that swathes of articles were written about its sorry state.
In 2024, Musk live-streamed himself playing Path of Exile 2, which led to even more ridicule. Despite having a character on the worldwide leaderboards, the self-proclaimed “technoking” didn’t understand basic mechanics, later admitting to account boosting by paying others to play the game for him, scraping greatness on the backs of others like so many other CEOs.
In a deep dive on the ongoing development of Musk’s xAI chatbot by Business Insider, it was revealed that Musk has delayed the AI’s release as it couldn’t help him play Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 more efficiently. While Baldur’s Gate 3 does have its complexities, it’s also a fairly entry-level CRPG—at least compared to games like Solasta and Pathfinder—and it’s not exactly a hard experience.
“In one instance last year, a model release was delayed for several days because Musk was dissatisfied with how the chatbot answered detailed questions about the video game ‘Baldur’s Gate’ according to people familiar with the matter,” the report states. “High-level engineers were pulled from other projects to improve the responses before launch, they said.”
Alongside wanting the AI to help him play Baldur’s Gate 3, Musk reportedly forced the creation of “at least five war rooms” with one “dedicated to teaching Grok how to play one of Musk’s favourite video games, League of Legends.” Presumably, this would let Musk’s AI teach him how to properly play the game.
In a post on Twitter, Larian publishing director Michael Douse responded to the Business Insider post, saying “can I have just one normal week”.
On the one hand, maybe it is commendable to have an AI chatbot delayed for inaccuracies in its responses. However, considering the blanket inaccuracies available in all AI models and the fact that the finished product will likely always be inaccurate, biased, and environmentally devastating, the move from Musk to push the product solely to make him competent at video games, is hilariously vapid.
If you want to learn how to play Baldur’s Gate 3, there’s already a wealth of information out there. Dozens of websites have written guides from actual gamers detailing their experience with the game, most of them also including pictures, and there are thousands of YouTube videos showing pretty much any scenario you could need. In fact, you can even watch the game’s developers play large chunks of the game.
