Musk says SpaceX will cover Grok Bot's purchase mistakes, but its terms say customers pay
The Grok Bot Terms, updated three days earlier, make the customer responsible for every charge the agent runs up.
At 1:57 am Eastern on October 15, 2026, Elon Musk promised on X that SpaceX would pay people back if Grok Bot makes a mistake buying something for them, or leaks their card. He added that a leak has never happened.
This works well. If Grok @Bot makes a mistake with a purchase or leaks your card (never happened yet), SpaceX will make you whole.
That's a bigger promise than the one in writing. The Grok Bot Terms, last updated October 12, 2026, put the cost of an agent's actions on the customer, and Musk's post doesn't mention them.
How Grok Bot buys things
Musk pitched the shopping trick on October 10. You photograph your credit card, drop the picture into a chat, and the agent goes looking for the best price and places the order. We covered that post at the time.
To buy stuff, you can just take a picture of your credit card, drop it in the chat and Grok @Bot will scour the Internet for the best deal on the item you want and order it
What the terms say
The terms call whatever the agent does on your behalf Agentic Actions. Their list includes accessing websites, sending communications and dealing with third-party services. Section 2.4 is the part Musk's post runs into.
Customer is solely responsible for charges, commitments, communications, and other consequences resulting from Agentic Actions authorized or initiated by Customer or its Users.
The capitalized paragraph under it goes further. It makes the customer responsible for every action Grok Bot takes, "whether or not" they meant or authorized it, and it rules out the provider's liability for any charge unless its own gross negligence or willful misconduct directly caused it.
Section 2.3 tells customers to put a human check in front of financial transactions. It also says approval controls "do not reverse completed actions".
Which one counts
I'm not a lawyer, so I won't guess which text a court would weigh more. The post sets no limit and doesn't say what counts as a mistake, while the terms are specific about who pays.
The terms say updates take effect as soon as they're posted, unless a change is materially adverse to the customer. When we read them on October 15, section 2.4 hadn't changed.
More on xAI
- Musk says Digital Optimus can play halfway through Diablo just by watching the screenOctober 10, 2026
- Musk says Grok Bot will route tasks to Claude Opus 5.5, Midjourney and SunoOctober 7, 2026
- Musk says SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI, following Trump's order renaming AIOctober 4, 2026
- New York City Council subpoenas Musk's SpaceXAI after it ignored an AI safety hearing inviteSeptember 28, 2026
