The New York City Council issued a subpoena to Musk on Monday, demanding that he or another representative of SpaceXAI testify in an investigation concerning artificial intelligence safety risks.

According to a letter sent to Musk by City Council Speaker Julie Menin, the city's "investigation will assess the rapidly emerging risks to public safety, cybersecurity, economic stability, privacy, consumers, and businesses, and whether immediate legislative action is needed to protect New Yorkers."

SpaceX is Musk's reusable rocket company, which merged with his AI startup xAI in February of this year, creating a conglomerate that now owns X and the chatbot Grok.

The merged company went public in June and is currently valued at approximately $2 trillion. Last month, SpaceX completed a $60 billion acquisition of AI programming startup Cursor.

Lawsuits against SpaceXAI have been piling up after Grok was able to mass-produce deepfake pornographic content based on non-consensual images of real people. The city of Baltimore accused the company of violating consumer protection laws and engaging in deceptive trade practices by marketing its Grok image generation and editing tools as generally safe.

SpaceXAI also faces a proposed class action lawsuit filed by teenagers because Grok generated images depicting them in pornographic and demeaning scenarios. In a press release on Monday, the New York City Council stated that Musk's testimony will "take place on October 5 at a rare full-committee hearing of the Council," with all 51 members present.

The press release said: "This hearing follows weeks of serious warnings from whistleblowers and AI executives, as well as reports that runaway AI agents have already caused damage to government databases."