Over the past few months, OpenAI has seemingly made subtle moves in a bid to diversify its portfolio from just developing AI models and ChatGPT to the recently rumored screenless ChatGPT smartphone in collaboration with former Apple design chief Jony Ive.
And as it now seems, the company may cast its net even wider. According to a report by The Verge, the ChatGPT maker is developing a social network platform to take on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta apps.
However, the details about this new development are slim at best, as it is still in the early stages. The Verge notes an internal prototype with a social feed for ChatGPT’s image generation.
Interestingly, the report suggests that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is actively soliciting feedback about the project, potentially indicating he is trying to assess whether it will be a worthwhile venture to dabble in.
To that end, it remains unclear whether the social network will ship as a standalone app or be integrated into ChatGPT, allowing OpenAI to tap into the AI app’s broad user base.
According to people familiar with the project, OpenAI’s social network will be designed to help people share better content. “The Grok integration with X has made everyone jealous,” an anonymous OpenAI staffer said. “Especially how people create viral tweets by getting it to say something stupid.”
In February, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quoted a report from CNBC about Meta’s plan to release a standalone Meta AI app to give OpenAI’s ChatGPT a run for its money. “Lol, if Facebook tries to come at us and we just uno reverse them, it would be so funny,” added Altman.
In the same month, Sam Altman took a stab at Elon Musk by offering to buy X for $9.74 billion. “Swindler,” an enraged Elon Musk responded. This is in response to the billionaire attempting to acquire OpenAI for $97.4 billion.
As you may know, Elon Musk has filed two lawsuits against OpenAI, citing a stark betrayal in its founding mission and involvement in racketeering activities.
To that end, if OpenAI moves forward with the rumored plans to develop a social network, it could gain access to untapped data to train its flagship AI models amid reports that scaling laws have begun to stunt AI progression.
