Surveys of industry experts and social media users indicate that Elon Musk has become the least likable tech leader this year.
Musk, along with other executives and scientists leading the development in artificial intelligence (AI), was named Time’s Person of the Year of 2025 for being “architects of AI.”
However, as the year comes to an end, the tech billionaire has also earned some less noble titles.
An Indicator’s survey of 53 experts named Musk the King of Digital Deception for having “the most detrimental effect on online information quality” due to his “attacks on Wikipedia” and “reckless deployment of Grok.”
In October, Musk’s company xAI launched Grokipedia, an alternative to Wikipedia, which he criticized for left-wing bias, dubbing it “Wokepedia.” Grokipedia has attracted criticism for citing unreliable sources, including those peddling popular conspiracy theories.
Meanwhile, xAI’s chatbot Grok came under fire for spewing antisemitic remarks, including praising Adolf Hitler, which Musk said the chatbot was manipulated into doing.
When Paris Marx, the host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, asked his LinkedIn followers to vote for the worst person in tech in 2025, Musk again got the most votes after beating Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Palantir Technologies, in the final round.
A LinkedIn poll, however, isn’t a rigorous opinion survey that represents different populations and raises unbiased questions, so its results should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, both surveys reflect how the tumultuous year for Musk has hurt his image.
After President Donald Trump was sworn into office, Musk played a major role in creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), responsible for laying off over 200,000 federal employees across the US.
Involvement in politics cost Musk popularity in the eyes of the general public. As many as 61% of American adults had an unfavorable opinion of the tech billionaire in August, making him the least liked public figure, according to a Gallup survey.
A scandalous year for the tech industry
In the Indicator’s and Marx’s surveys, Musk was followed by Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman.
Nearly one-third (31%) of Americans have a very negative opinion of Zuckerberg, and 13% of Americans have a very negative opinion of Altman, according to a 2025 survey.
Their companies also went under intense scrutiny this year. Just last month, an investigation revealed that around 10% of Meta’s total revenue in 2024 came from misleading advertisements and ads for illegal products on Instagram and Facebook.
The documents obtained by Reuters show that, although Meta aims to reduce its illicit revenue stream, the company is concerned that this could impact its business projections.
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is now facing lawsuits alleging that the chatbot pushed multiple people, including teenagers, into suicide.
While the company denies the allegations, its data released in October suggests that 0.15% of ChatGPT users in a given week have conversations that “include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.”
OpenAI is also involved in legal battles with media companies and authors over copyright infringement.
The widespread use of generative AI, developed by major tech companies, is accompanied by growing concerns over job displacement and data privacy, among other issues.
Unsurprisingly, only 24% of American adults reported having “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in big tech companies.
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