‘Don’t think much about him’: OpenAI’s Sam Altman plays down Elon Musk’s GPT-5 criticism

Sam Altman brushed off Elon Musk’s criticism of OpenAI’s GPT-5, the latest model for its flagship ChatGPT, on Friday.

“I don’t think about him that much. I don’t even know what that means,” the OpenAI founder said during a conversation with CNBC.

Altman described the billionaire as someone who tweets constantly and has been openly critical of OpenAI’s products and services.


“He was someone who was just tweeting all day about how much OpenAI sucks and our model is bad and you know, not going to be a good company. So I don't know how you square those things,” he said.

After Microsoft announced that OpenAI’s latest model will be integrated into its products like Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot, Musk posted on X: “OpenAI is going to eat Microsoft alive.”


Musk also claimed that Grok 4, the latest model from his AI company xAI, is far superior to GPT-5.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even welcomed the competition. “People have been trying for 50 years and that’s the fun of it! Each day you learn something new, and innovate, partner, and compete. Excited for Grok 4 on Azure and looking forward to Grok 5!”


Microsoft has been a significant investor in OpenAI since its early days, although the two companies are renegotiating their relationship.

OpenAI launched the much-awaited GPT-5 on Thursday, calling it the smartest and most capable version of its artificial intelligence models to date. The company says the new model is more accurate, more efficient, and has significantly lower hallucination rates compared to previous versions.

GPT-5 is now being gradually rolled out to ChatGPT Plus, Pro users, and Team plans across web, mobile, and desktop platforms. It will soon be available to Enterprise and Education plan users as well.

Microsoft has integrated GPT-5 across its major platforms, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Azure AI Foundry.