Elon Musk’s xAI to Release AI Model to Select Group

Elon Musk’s startup xAI will release its first artificial intelligence (AI) model on Saturday (Nov. 4).

“Tomorrow, @xai will release its first AI to a select group,” Musk said Friday (Nov. 3) in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “In some important respects, it is the best that currently exists.”

This launch comes about a year after OpenAI — a company that Musk co-founded in 2015 and stepped down from in 2018 — made generative AI go viral with its launch of ChatGPT, Reuters reported Friday.

Musk’s startup, xAI, launched in July and now also works with X, which is owned by Musk, and Tesla, according to the report.

In July, Musk announced the launch of xAI by saying it was being formed to “understand reality.” The firm’s website added: “The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe.”

The company is led by Musk and its team includes veterans of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla and the University of Toronto.

Musk had hinted for months that he wants to build an alternative to OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT. Since leaving that company’s board in 2018, he has been increasingly critical of OpenAI and cautious about developments around AI in general.

Musk was among the first signatories to an open letter published by AI watchdog group Future of Life Institute in March on the potential dangers of AI.

That letter read in part: “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be managed.”

It also called for “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

Musk’s announcement of the upcoming launch of xAI’s model comes a day after he met with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a discussion about the implications of generative AI and told him that there will come a time when “you can have a job if you want a job … but AI will be able to do everything. It’s hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed.”