Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, has established a brand-new artificial intelligence (AI) company in the US state of Nevada called X.AI.
JUST IN: Elon Musk officially creates OpenAI ChatGPT rival, X․AI Corp.
— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) April 14, 2023
The company is rumored to be a direct competitor to OpenAI, the AI research firm that Musk co-founded in 2015 before leaving in 2018. A few weeks prior to Musk’s decision to sign an open letter with other specialists requesting a six-month pause in the development of powerful AI systems, the new business was officially founded on March 9.
Given that Musk has previously voiced public criticism of AI research, stating that it may pose “profound risks to society and humanity,” the creation of X.AI seems surprising.
ChatGPT Rival
Musk’s new company is seen as a significant move into the AI space and potentially a direct competitor to OpenAI‘s ChatGPT, a bot that generates natural language text from short prompts.
Musk recently merged Twitter with a newly-created “X” shell company, leading some to speculate that X.AI may be linked to his social media platform. According to an Insider report, Musk has bought thousands of powerful computing processors and hired engineering talent for an AI project at Twitter.
However, the launch of X.AI may not be without controversy. Critics have previously described an open letter that Musk and other luminaries signed as a “hot mess” of “AI hype.” The letter called for a pause in the development of AI systems with human-competitive intelligence, arguing that such systems pose risks to society and humanity. Critics argued that the letter misrepresented an academic paper and was not grounded in scientific evidence.
Despite the criticism, big tech companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft have spent years working on AI systems to help with translations, search, and targeted advertising. Microsoft has even invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and put its technology to work in its Bing internet search service.
It remains to be seen what impact X.AI will have on the AI landscape and whether it will seriously threaten established players like OpenAI. However, Musk’s track record of innovation and disruption suggests that the new company is one to watch in the years ahead.
