Elon Musk's Newest Venture Is Sure To Ruffle Feathers

The billionaire has a big new idea.

Elon Musk is going from being a co-founder of OpenAI, the company behind the AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT, to one of its rivals, according to a new report.

Musk is seeking to form a new AI research lab in order to build a product that rivals ChatGPT, a program that Musk has both lauded and lambasted in recent weeks, according to a report in The Information.

DON'T MISS: Elon Musk May Unveil a $25,000 Tesla

Musk is in the process of recruiting Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Alphabet's DeepMind AI unit, according to the report. 

Musk has been a consistent booster of OpenAI on his Twitter account dating back to 2016. Back in August 2020, he estimated that the fifth and sixth iterations of ChatGPT "could be indistinguishable from the smartest humans."

But he has been changing his tune about the company since Microsoft  (MSFT) - Get Free Report started investing in the company in 2019.

"OpenAI is essentially captured by Microsoft," he tweeted in September 2020.

He continued his criticism this month while claiming that he was responsible for naming the company. 

Musk Goes Back and Forth

Last year, Musk did not take kindly to a tweet suggesting that The New York Times had zero coverage of ChatGPT.

His conclusion: 

Since that tweet ChatGPT has blown up, receiving near constant media coverage over the past month. 

Ironically, some of the coverage has been centered on the AI's "wokeness" in refusing to answer some queries due to its programming. 

Musk revealed in December that OpenAI had access to Twitter's database as part of its training.

It was a practice that he ended.