Conservative podcaster Katie Miller lashed out after being confronted with evidence that she may have violated federal disclosure rules by repeatedly attacking AI chatbots online without revealing her financial stake in a competing company, according to a new report.
A Washington Post analysis found that over roughly nine months, Miller published nearly 500 posts criticizing ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, accusing the chatbots of liberal bias, endangering children and lacking adequate security.
During that same stretch, however, she posted favorably about Grok, the chatbot made by Elon Musk's xAI, more than 160 times without disclosing a financial filing released last week revealed she holds more than $1 million in xAI stock, purchased in December after she began consulting for the company, the Post reported.
Before acquiring the stock, Miller rarely posted about any of the companies, and legal experts told the Post that Federal Trade Commission guidelines would have required her to disclose the financial relationship when promoting or attacking competing products.
"Under any ordinary system — including the rules that the FTC has announced — she would need to disclose a financial motivation that would cause people to think about her recommendation differently," said Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor.
When a Post reporter asked why she hadn't made that disclosure, Miller responded with a profanity-laced message attacking the outlet as "fake news."
"I've done what every other person in the world does, which is I own a stock in a company," she told the reporter, adding that her posts "are not related to her purchase of stock in the company."
"I'm not getting paid to post," Miller said, "I do it for the love of the game."
Miller is married to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, whose financial disclosure listed her xAI holdings, and the filing states he has been recused from official matters involving her employment and stock, the analysis noted.
She previously advised Musk during his tenure leading DOGE, describing herself as the "chief Elon wrangler."
Her xAI shares were purchased amid a multibillion-dollar funding round and could not have been bought through an ordinary brokerage account, according to the report.
xAI has since merged with Musk's SpaceX in a deal valuing SpaceX at $1 trillion, and SpaceX has since gone public — though it remains unclear how much, if anything, Miller's family gained from the transaction.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Post on the disclosure allegations.
