Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are the latest tech moguls to join the crowded ChatGPT race. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, is reportedly recruiting a team of artificial intelligence researchers to build a ChatGPT rival, while Zuckerberg has assembled a team at Meta (META) to integrate so-called generative A.I. into its various products.
Musk has approached A.I. researchers in recent weeks about forming a new lab to develop a ChatGPT-like text generator, The Information reported yesterday (Feb. 27). People contacted by Musk include Igor Babuschkin, a former researcher at Alphabet’s DeepMind A.I. unit, according to The Information. It’s unclear whether this new lab will be part of any Musk-owned companies or an independent organization.
Musk, who also owns Twitter, recently criticized OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, for installing safeguards that prevent ChatGPT from producing offensive text on divisive subjects. In a December tweet, he lamented OpenAI was “training AI to be woke” and suggested “what we need is TruthGPT.”
Musk is one of the cofounders of OpenAI, but he cut ties with the company in 2018 to avoid potential conflicts of interest with Tesla, which was using OpenAI’s software for product development.
Also yesterday, Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post Meta is building a “top-level product group” to integrate generative A.I. into its many products, including WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.
In the short term, Meta will focus on building creative and expressive tools using A.I., Zuckerberg said in the post. The company has started testing text-based A.I. tools on WhatsApp and Messenger. In the longer term, Meta plan to develop “A.I. personas that can help people in a variety of ways,” Zuckerberg said, suggesting the technology could be integrated into the company’s Metaverse products.
Earlier this month, Google and Microsoft both announced new products powered by text-generating A.I. technologies. Microsoft unveiled a new version of its search engine Bing enhanced by ChatGPT’s language model. Google debuted its own chatbot named Bard, powered by its in-house language model LaMDA.