Elon Musk announces gen AI firm xAI

Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced the launch of his generative artificial intelligence startup xAI.

The new AI firm comprises a team of engineers who have previously worked a competitor firms OpenAI and DeepMind.

Of the launch, Musk tweeted: “Announcing the formation of @xAI to understand reality.”

Since the launch of OpenAI’s AI chatbot ChatGPT last November the generative AI sector has seen significant excitement as well as caution over its use.

AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are programs that respond to written prompts by the user. They can help with planning, writing, coding, and more.

Over the past few months, Musk has been vocal about halting the development of AI and signed a letter calling for a temporary halt, claiming that the sector needed more planning and management with commensurate care and resources.

“Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control,” the letter read.

On xAI’s main webpage, it has made a point of noting that the team is advised by the director of the Center for AI Safety, Dan Hendrycks.

“If I tried to understand the true nature of the universe, that’s actually the best thing that I can come up with from an AI safety standpoint,” Musk said in a Twitter Spaces event this week. “I think it is going to be pro-humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than not-humanity.”

Google has also announced this week that it is expanding Bard to Europe and Brazil. It will also be able to understand “over 40 languages”, and will be able to change the tone and style of its responses in either simple, long, short, professional, or casual languages.