It’s official: Elon Musk is getting into the AI business.
On Wednesday, an official website for Musk’s AI venture went live at X.AI(opens in a new tab). A Twitter account also launched with the handle @xAI and affiliate badges for individuals working at the newly formed company. Musk then confirmed his involvement by changing his own personal Twitter profile’s bio to simply the @xAI handle.
“Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality,” Musk tweeted(opens in a new tab).
Musk offered no further information at the time this article was published. The official website is also lacking in any details behind the project.
“Announcing xAI,” the xAI homepage reads. “July 12th 2023.”
“Today we announce the formation of xAI,” the website continues. “The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe.”
There are 12 members listed on the website as part of the xAI team, including Musk himself. xAI employs individuals who previously worked with other AI companies such as OpenAI, Deep Mind, Google Research, Microsoft Research, and Tesla.
The xAI homepage also promotes an upcoming Twitter Space with the members of the xAI team where listeners can ask questions. The audio chat is scheduled for Friday, July 14.
Eagle-eyed Twitter users may have noticed(opens in a new tab) Musk hint at the company launch yesterday.Â
“Practically invisible,” Musk tweeted alongside a photo of Tesla’s Cybertruck with a camouflage-esque design. In the background of the picture, “X.AI” can be seen in a building window.
News of Musk’s entry into the AI space has trickled out over the past few months. The owner of Twitter and CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla has been quite opinionated about AI technology, especially after the launch of OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Musk has previously railed against ChatGPT for being “woke” or providing users with “politically correct” output. In February, Igor Babuschkin, a former senior AI researcher at Google’s Deepmind, shared that Musk had reached out to him about potentially working on his AI vision. Babyschkin is notably featured as one of the 12 xAI team members.
In April, reports stated that Musk was indeed going ahead with an AI project, named X.AI Corp. The Financial Times(opens in a new tab) reported that Musk was already buying up thousands of powerful Nvidia GPU processors in order to get started on the intensive data training work.
While the xAI website is lacking lots of information, it does interestingly take the opportunity to point out that, despite the name, xAI is not part of Musk’s X Corp.
“We are a separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission,” it reads, alongside a call for engineers and researchers to apply to work at the company.
X.AI joins a long list of companies – Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Boring Company – owned and led by Musk. Tesla shareholders must be especially thrilled(opens in a new tab) over the news.Â
UPDATE: Jul. 14, 2023, 4:28 p.m. EDT This story was updated throughout to correct the name of the company to xAI and differentiate it from the website address for the company, which is x.AI.
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