Explained: Why is Elon Musk planning to launch a ChatGPT-like entity?

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has frequently publicly criticized OpenAI after it launched the artificial intelligence-based chatbot ‘ChatGPT’, established an A.I. company called X.AI Corporation in the state of Nevada in the United States.

According to media reports, the documents discovered on Friday show Musk's name listed as the director of the company, which was founded on March 9th, as per the state's business filing. 

The Financial Times on Friday reported that billionaire Elon Musk is working on launching an artificial intelligence start-up that will rival ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. 

It's worth noting that the founding date of X.AI predates Musk's involvement in an open letter advocating for a six-month pause in the development of powerful AI systems, which was published on the website of the Future of Life Institute, a venture funded by Musk.

Why Musk is planning to launch an OpenAI rival?

With the incorporation of X.AI, Elon Musk is potentially laying the groundwork for a startup that could pursue his artificial intelligence ambitions. The efforts could be part of Musk’s larger ambitions to create a superapp.

The chief executive officer of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has long talked about creating an “everything app” called X. Recently, he also merged Twitter into a parent corporation called X Corp. He has said that the social network will be an ‘accelerant’ for creating X.

Musk is also holding discussions with Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. investors about helping fund an AI startup, The Financial Times reported as quoted by Bloomberg. 

He has also acquired thousands of processors from Nvidia Corp. for the new project. 

Despite his work around AI, Musk was among a group of researchers and tech industry leaders that last month called for developers to pause the training of powerful AI models.

He was also involved early on in the creation of OpenAI. Musk helped start the organization in 2015 and served as co-chair along with Sam Altman, the current CEO. At the time, OpenAI’s goal was to ‘advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate a financial return.’

In 2018, the billionaire left OpenAI's board and has since criticized the organization, which created a for-profit arm in 2019. He has expressed worry that it was “training AI to be woke” and said it was “effectively controlled by Microsoft.” Microsoft Corp. has invested $10 billion into OpenAI.

(With inputs from agencies)