Elon Musk Launches xAI, His New Artificial-Intelligence Company
Tech companies are racing to develop alternatives to ChatGPT Elon Musk has been recruiting researchers to try to create a rival to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Photo: Matthew Busch for The Wall Street Journal By Suryatapa Bhattacharya Updated July 12, 2023 3:46 pm ET Elon Musk has launched his new artificial-intelligence business, xAI, as the tech industry races to develop new AI initiatives. “Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality,” Musk said Wednesday on Twitter, the social-media platform he owns. Musk had incorporated the AI company in Nevada in March. Musk has been
Elon Musk has been recruiting researchers to try to create a rival to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Photo: Matthew Busch for The Wall Street Journal
Elon Musk has launched his new artificial-intelligence business, xAI, as the tech industry races to develop new AI initiatives.
“Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality,” Musk said Wednesday on Twitter, the social-media platform he owns. Musk had incorporated the AI company in Nevada in March.
Musk has been recruiting researchers to try to create a rival to OpenAI, the AI company that launched the viral chatbot ChatGPT in November, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Musk has complained ChatGPT is politically correct and warned it could lead AI to become too powerful for humans to control.
Musk co-founded OpenAI but left after a power struggle.
The rapid adoption of ChatGPT set off a frenzy of investor interest in the AI sector. Microsoft, which had partnered with OpenAI, deepened the relationship in January with a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment. Google, a unit of Alphabet, has tried to keep up, releasing its own chatbot, Bard.
At The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, executives discuss the value of artificial intelligence as well as possible downsides to the widespread use of the technology.
“There should be a significant third horse in the race here,” Musk said at a WSJ CEO Council event in May, going on to mention Microsoft and Google. “So more on that soon.”
The xAI website said it is a separate company from Twitter, whose name Musk changed to X Corp. Musk’s history with the letter X goes way back. His former online banking startup, X.com, later became PayPal. Musk often refers to one of his children as X.
The AI company said it has added people with industry experience at Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Tesla. Musk is also Tesla’s CEO.
Musk joined some tech executives and AI experts in March in calling for a moratorium of six months or more on developing advanced AI technology. Proponents of the pause argued that it would give the industry time to set safety standards and head off potential harms.
Write to Suryatapa Bhattacharya at [email protected]
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