Daniel Wolfram
It seems that no one cares about financial independence during Trump’s second term.
Conservative podcaster Katie Miller spent almost a year slamming popular artificial intelligence tools on social media and her podcast, The Katie Miller Podcast.
The wife of the controversial far-right advisor to Trump, Stephen Miller, targeted ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. She accused them of liberal bias and security flaws.
“ChatGPT says President Trump is a 9 out of 10 level threat to Democracy. Imagine this AI in your kids’ classrooms with its revisionist history,” Miller wrote on social media last week.
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A major stake in Grok
However, this post may not just have been in the best interest of conservative kids.
A new report by The Washington Post shows she has a major financial stake in one of the competitors to the AI companies she has targeted.
The Post revealed she held over $1 million in stock in xAI, Elon Musk’s AI firm behind rival chatbot Grok. The financial interest surfaced in official White House documents.
Miller denied any wrongdoing. “I’m not getting paid to post, I do it for the love of the game,” she wrote in a text message when asked to comment.
Ties to Elon Musk
The Washington Post analyzed nearly 500 posts where Miller went after other chatbots. During that same period, she repeatedly urged her followers to switch to Grok instead.
Her relationship with Elon Musk runs deep. Miller previously served as a top aide to Musk during his time running the cost-cutting DOGE initiative, even calling herself the “chief Elon wrangler.”
She bought the xAI stock shortly after Musk appeared on her podcast. At the time, xAI was private. That meant regular investors could not buy shares without special access.
The situation has drawn scrutiny from legal experts. Harvard Law professor Rebecca Tushnet noted that FTC rules generally require influencers to disclose financial motives when making recommendations.
Legal rules questioned
Miller rejected the premise of the article and called the newspaper “fake news.”
“I’ve done what every other person in the world does, which is I own a stock in a company,” she said.
Following her stock purchase, xAI merged with SpaceX in a deal valuing the business at $250 billion. The company later went public. That transition netted early backers massive potential profits.
Meanwhile, the watchdogs that are meant to prevent insider trading and conflicts of interest seem uninterested in taking action.
The head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Andrew Ferguson, took to social media to deny that there is anything illegal going on with Miller’s investments.
