There could be a major threat on the horizon for Elon Musk and his $300,000,000,000 social media empire, as ChatGPT’s Sam Altman is reportedly planning a platform of his own powered by the dominant AI’s capabilities.
The fierce rivalry between Elon Musk and Sam Altman is undeniable, as its been raging on now for over a decade since they became co-founders of OpenAI.
There have been multiple lawsuits filed between their companies, including two major claims from Musk’s side that question OpenAI’s move towards a for-profit model and a potential breach of antitrust laws following a partnership with Microsoft.
Tensions seemingly reached a climax when Musk offered to purchase OpenAI for a staggering figure of $97 billion, to which Altman not only rebuffed but offered to purchase X (formerly Twitter) for just $9.7 billion in return, likely making reference to the fact that the social media platform has significantly declined in value since Musk bought it in 2022.
Altman even went as far to tear Musk apart in an interview, claiming that Musk’s entire life is ‘from a position of insecurity’ and that he’s ‘not a happy person’, and he seems to have weaponzied these comments into a new project that could knock Musk down even further.
As reported by The Verge, anonymous sources have indicated that Altman’s next shock move involves the creation of a new social media platform that is powered by ChatGPT’s image generation capabilities.
Following a surge in popularity thanks largely to ChatGPT’s ability to produce ‘Studio Ghibli-like’ filters of any image that you fed to it, the release of GPT-4o to the public significantly increased the AI software’s image-making skills, leading to a surge of new signups.
Altman is currently asking around for feedback about the project, and it’s unclear exactly what form it currently takes, but in theory it would allow users a place to directly share their ChatGPT creations, as opposed to taking them to other social media platforms which are now considered to be rivals.
Additionally, it’s not known whether this would take form as a separate dedicated app and website, or whether it would be done within ChatGPT itself considering the large number of existing users already embedded within the artificial intelligence platform.
Outside of a perceived spitefulness towards Musk, one of the biggest reasons why Altman and OpenAI are likely making this move is due to the increased AI integration in many of the most popular social media platforms out there.
Both Meta and X have their own bespoke AI tools, and the recent ‘purchase’ of X by Musk’s xAI provides the richest man in the world a significant advantage when it comes to accessing and processing data from millions of individuals.
ChatGPT is already the world’s most popular AI tool, but it would be able to expand its reach significantly with a partnering social media, and with a race so competitive that Musk is allegedly currently breaking the law to keep up with power demands, companies like OpenAI will have to continue its innovation to succeed.
