"Donated The First $100 Million But...": Elon Musk On OpenAI

Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed on Friday that Microsoft Corporation obtained "exclusive access to the entire OpenAI codebase" following the tech giant's latest investment in the company. Responding to a query about his role in development of OpenAI, the billionaire responded on Twitter saying he "donated the first $100 million" when it was a non-profit. Mr Musk also clarified that he has "no ownership or control" on OpenAI now. Mr Musk was one of the original founders of the company that launched ChatGPT, but left in 2018 after disagreements with the management. In recent months, he has been criticising the company and its product, including the chatbot.

"As part of their investment, Microsoft gained exclusive access to the entire OpenAI codebase," Mr Musk said on Twitter.

As part of their investment, Microsoft gained exclusive access to the entire OpenAI codebase

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2023

"ChatGPT is entirely housed within Microsoft Azure. When push comes to shove, they have everything, including the model weights," he added in another tweet.

In January, Microsoft said in a blogpost that it is extending its long-term partnership with OpenAI through a new "multiyear, multibillion dollar investment".

The deal will see Microsoft increase its investments in the development and deployment of supercomputing systems to assist OpenAI's research.

Nearly two months later, the integration of OpenAI's technology into Microsoft-owned Bing has driven people to the little-used search engine and helped it compete better with market leader Google in page visits growth, according to data from analytics firm Similarweb.

Page visits on Bing have risen 15.8 per cent since Microsoft Corp unveiled its artificial intelligence-powered version on Feb. 7, compared with a near 1 per cent decline for the Alphabet-owned search engine, data till March 20 showed.

Also Read | Twitter User Asks ChatGPT To Write Tweet That Would Get A Reply From Elon Musk. It Did

Meanwhile, Vice News said in a report earlier this month that Mr Musk is developing an alternative to ChatGPT, which he said is too "woke". The outlet said that Igor Babuschkin, who left Google's DeepMind AI unit, has been recruited by Mr Musk to lead the development of the rival chatbot.

However, the project is still in very early stage and not much details are available.