Elon Musk plans AI startup to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT : report

Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter and EV maker Tesla, is planning to launch a new artificial intelligence startup to compete with Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Financial Times (FT) reported on Friday.

Elon Musk is currently engaging in talks with several investors from SpaceX and Tesla regarding potential investments in his new venture, according to the report.

Musk has also secured thousands of high-powered GPU processors from Nvidia, the report said citing sources.


ET had reported in February, citing a report from US-based tech news platform The Information, that Musk had approached several AI researchers to form a new lab which will work on developing an alternative to ChatGPT.

The Twitter CEO had reached out to Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Alphabet’s DeepMind AI unit and specialises in the kind of machine-learning models that power chatbots like ChatGPT, according to the report by The Information..

The planned venture would give Musk the chance to go up against OpenAI, the organisation supported by Microsoft that he co-founded in 2015. Musk left the board three years later as a result of conflicts with the organisation's management, which included divergent opinions on AI safety, the FT report added.

Over the last few months, Musk has repeatedly criticised the company for installing safeguards that prevent ChatGPT from producing text that might offend users.

Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in training systems more powerful than OpenAI's newly launched model GPT-4, last month, in an open letter, citing potential risks to society and humanity.

Microsoft, an early backer of OpenAI, has reportedly invested another $10 billion in it. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms Inc is creating a new top-level product group focused on generative artificial intelligence, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in February..

OpenAI took the internet by storm last November when it released the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, which produces answers mimicking human speech.