Elon Musk Considering Creating ChatGPT Rival

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX, reportedly is off chasing a new venture: A new AI research lab that will create a ChatGPT rival.

According to The Information, Musk has approached former DeepMind researcher Igor Babuschkin to lead the lab. Babuschkin specializes in machine learning models like the ones that power ChatGPT. DeepMind is Google's AI research lab.

Musk and Babuschkin are in early talks to create a team but with no specific products yet in mind to develop. Also, Musk reportedly is not interested in lowering content safeguards if they develop a new chatbot – harkening to accusations that he would unleash harmful content after cutting staff at Twitter's content moderation team.

Babuschkin has not officially signed on to the new research lab.

On Friday, Musk tweeted that “I used to be in crypto, but now I got interested in AI.”

Musk ties to OpenAI

Musk was one of the founders of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, as a nonprofit research organization. He left the company’s board in 2018 and reportedly cut all ties over disagreements about OpenAI’s trajectory.

Last month, Musk tweeted that OpenAI was created to be a nonprofit “counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.”

Related:Microsoft Expands Investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI

In 2019, the OpenAI nonprofit parent created OpenAI LP, a ‘capped-profit’ company that is a hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit. The company wanted to raise capital to fund the enormous computing power needed for its ambitious AI models.

“We’ll need to invest billions of dollars in upcoming years into large-scale cloud compute, attracting and retaining talented people, and building AI supercomputers,” OpenAI has said. “We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance."