Elon Musk is seeking to create a rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT, report says
- Elon Musk is reportedly seeking to develop a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
- Musk has been approaching researchers about forming a new research lab, The Information reported.
Elon Musk is reportedly seeking to develop a competitor to OpenAI's buzzy chatbot, ChatGPT.
Musk has already approached some AI researchers about a potential research lab, The Information reported citing people with knowledge of the matter.
The Tesla CEO has been enlisting former DeepMind senior researcher Igor Babuschkin to head up the project, per the publication. It added that Babuschkin specialized in the kind of machine learning needed to develop chatbots. He has previously worked at OpenAI, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Babuschkin told The Information he left Google's DeepMind last week but had not officially signed on to Musk's project.
Musk cofounded OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in 2015 but parted ways with the company in 2018.
However, he has recently been critical of both the AI company and the viral chatbot. The billionaire has taken issue with some of the chatbot's safeguards, calling some of the responses "concerning."
Musk has also raised concerns about ChatGPT's accuracy. As Insider reported, in December, he responded to a tweet from Alex Epstein, an energy expert who has advocated the use of fossil fuels, with what appeared to be a screenshot of a ChatGPT answer refusing to argue in favor of fossil fuels. Musk said at the time, "There is great danger in training an AI to lie."
At other times, Musk has seemed complimentary about OpenAI's tech, saying ChatGPT was "scary good."
Babuschkin told The Information he'd like "to work with Elon on something in the LLM space," referring to large language models, the technology that underpins AI tools like ChatGPT. But he added that creating a chatbot with fewer safeguards was not Musk's objective.
Representatives for Musk and Babuschkin did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.