Watchtower

xAI's risk management framework establishes criteria that models must meet before they are released. One such criterion is that models must not lie more than 50% of the time on the MASK benchmark (Model Alignment Between Statements and Knowledge), which measures how often models lie under pressure. Grok Code Fast 1 scored 71.9% on this test—well above the release threshold—but xAI released it anyway. The company justified the release by noting the model is less capable than Grok 4 and is designed for coding rather than general-purpose use. AI Lab Watch called this "the most brazen violation" of a safety policy to date.