Elon Musk to launch 'TruthGPT' to take on Google, Microsoft

Billionaire Elon Musk said that he will launch an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that he calls "TruthGPT" to challenge Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet’s (Google) Bard AI.

The evolution of ChatGPT has begun!

$TruthGPT https://t.co/nycfJEgBbk

— TruthGPT (@TruthGPTToken) February 17, 2023

The move came weeks after Musk and a group of AI experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI's newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.

"I'm going to start something which I call 'TruthGPT', or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe," Musk said in an interview aired in Fox News Channel on Monday.

The entrepreneur said that TruthGPT "might be the best path to safety" that would be "unlikely to annihilate humans" and even though "it's simply starting late, but I will try to create a third option," Musk said. 

Musk's entry into the burgeoning AI market comes after the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November last year. The chatbot, built on AI engine, can write software, hold meetings and compose poetry. In January, Microsoft announced a further multi-billion-dollar investment in OpenAI, and quickly expanded its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, integrating the tech into its Bing search engine. Soon after, Google released Bard, its own AI conversation engine, which suffered a setback at the launch and CEO Sundar Pichai promising a Bard AI upgrade soon.

Notably, Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but he stepped down from the company's board in 2018. In 2019, he tweeted that he left OpenAI because he had to focus on Tesla and SpaceX and also citing a “conflict of interest”. Later, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, also owned Twitter, a social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

Musk has been approaching AI researchers from Google to launch a startup to rival OpenAI, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Last month, he registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. The firm listed Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk's family office, as a secretary.

Nonetheless, Musk continued to reiterate his warnings about the potential harms of AI during the interview with Fox TV, saying “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production”.

“It has the potential of civilisational destruction,” he said, giving an example that a super intelligent AI can write incredibly well and potentially manipulate public opinions. 

The global generative AI market size is anticipated to reach nearly $110 billion by 2030, according to a new report by research firm Grand View Research. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 35.6% from 2023 to 2030, it said.