New York City Council
The City Council has subpoenaed Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI
It’s the first time Speaker Julie Menin has used the body’s subpoena power.
Grok, will you comply with this subpoena? John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin issued a rarely used subpoena on Monday to Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI to compel public testimony at the council’s upcoming oversight hearing on the risks posed by artificial intelligence.
SpaceXAI was the only company to not respond to the council’s inquiry and commit to sending a representative to the Oct. 5 hearing on AI safety, thus prompting the subpoena, a spokesperson for the council said. While Meta simply agreed to attend, the council said, the other major AI firms invited – including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic – only accepted and confirmed their attendance after explicit threats of subpoenas from the council, according to a council press release.
“These companies have a significant presence in New York City and collectively employ tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” Menin said in a statement. “Given the high stakes, these firms owe it to their workers and, above all, to the public to come before the Council, answer our questions, and provide input on our proposed legislation under oath.”
She has had chances to issue subpoenas to officials in the public sector, such as when the Mamdani administration ditched the pied-à-terre rollout oversight hearing, but has so far steered clear of the nuclear option to do so.
However, when Menin became speaker, she emphasized her desire to utilize the subpoena power available to the City Council to hold businesses engaging in predatory behavior accountable. Her subpoena of the company behind the Grok AI large language model shows how seriously Menin and her leadership team are taking the upcoming AI hearing – hoping to make a mark in the erupting debate over safety risks and how to regulate frontier models.
If SpaceXAI does not comply with the subpoena, the council plans to seek judicial enforcement of the subpoena in the New York State Supreme Court and if that doesn’t work, the council could seek further relief such as civil contempt sanctions, according to the speaker’s team.
SpaceXAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.